


The End

by cockymclaughlin



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Anal Sex, Character Death, Hand Jobs, Literal End of the World, M/M, Post Disaster Injury, Post-Apocalypse, Sci-Fi Elements, Witchcraft, death mention, graphic descriptions of illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-01-23 06:44:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12501244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cockymclaughlin/pseuds/cockymclaughlin
Summary: They don't really talk about Before.





	1. Chapter 1

Link’s growing tired of listening to dead leaves crunch under their boots.

He supposes that dead leaves are better than the other things they’ve come across over time, but he cringes every time Rhett steps on a pile. They’re hard to avoid, he knows, because he’s been trying for a few weeks now. It must be autumn, or damn near with how many of them litter the concrete below, get picked up by gusts of wind to dance ahead of them as they walk.

He kicks a pile, scowling at the soft, cracking sound they make as his foot collides with them.

“Yeah, show them who’s boss,” he hears from behind him. He turns with a sheepish grin to see Rhett  munching on a handful of berries he’d found on a bush a while back, his lips stained a familiar red that Link tries not to think about too hard.

As they walk, he notices that Rhett tries to avoid stepping on so many leaves.

He remembers a time in their lives where Rhett would have stepped on more once he picked up on Link’s annoyance. With the changing of the earth, they were shaped into new men, new friends, learning each other all over again as they learned how to live on this new, harsh, unforgiving world. As things got thankless around them, they softened around each other.

They’re growing, much like the plants around them, getting bigger and bigger and taking up each other’s space just as comfortably as the foliage is.

Rhett passes him a couple of berries, says, “Eat. I can’t carry you if you pass out, so I’d have to just leave you wherever you fell, and it would be really embarrassing, man.”

Link snorts. “Just let the moss eat me.” The berries are sweet, and the skin is softer than he anticipated. They taste good.

“Nah, I’m not willingly feeding this stuff,” Rhett tells him. “Plus, you give them one sacrifice, and they always expect more. I’d rather not start that chain of events, you know?”

“You give a mouse a cookie,” Link muses, letting the sentence fall there.

But Rhett laughs, lowers his voice dramatically, and teases, “And he’ll ask for another ritualistic sacrifice.”

“You remember those books?” Link reaches over and steals another berry from Rhett’s palm.

When Rhett shakes his head, Link shrugs his shoulders. They don’t really talk about Before. Link will try, will bring up little things from the past, and Rhett always goes quiet, shakes his head. Link used to press, used to say that he needed to talk about it to process it, to move on with his life, but Rhett always, _always_ tells him to drop it. He’s never been very good with talking about his emotions. So Link leaves it be, has stopped letting it eat away at his spine; because for a while, he could feel it narrowing so much he thought it might actually snap in half under the weight.

And nowadays, they mostly tell each other stories to pass the time. They make jokes and point out mundane, obvious things just to fill the silence. When the silence does creep in between them, Link knows it’s because they’re both remembering something. Rhett doesn’t let the silence last very long, most days.

Some days it stretches for miles and miles, tumbling along with them as they kick rocks down the path they walk.

They come across cars less than he thought they would, and they’re almost always covered in moss and vines, so destroyed they barely look like cars anymore. They don’t come across much that isn’t covered in moss and vines and destroyed beyond recognition. Buildings, if they’re lucky, will be just barely standing up enough for them to sneak inside and have a roof over their heads at night.

Because the thing about the sun going down is that things get louder and scarier, and Link has never liked sleeping on the ground. Before all this, he’d go camping, and he has wet dreams now about sleeping bags and heating pads, packaged food and bottled water. Now, they rely on body heat and spare clothes they’ll find if they’re lucky that day.

If his watch has been keeping track properly, it’s been a little over a year since everything happened. He doesn’t quite remember the exact day, or the exact chain of events, but he does remember screaming. He remembers the earthquake, the vines, and then silence for a while. In between static and fuzzy, blurs of colors, he remembers running until his lungs felt like they were collapsing.

They haven’t come across another person in months. Probably upwards of a year at this point. He knows, in the back of his head that it has a lot to do with whatever happened at the camp they stumbled across at the very beginning, but he still likes to pretend he doesn’t have an idea. It helps keep away the nightmares of eyes rolling into the back of everyone else’s skulls, watching them convulse and foam at the mouth as the two of them frantically tried to figure out what to do, what was happening.

Since then, any time they’ve come across tents, they’ve avoided them. They both know what they’d find. There aren’t bodies anymore, thanks to the moss, but just the remnants of life would be a sting much too harsh to swallow down. A couple of times, in his sleep, Rhett has mumbled, “Why us?” and Link can remember those words tripping their way out of his throat as they ran, stumbling over the bodies on their way out of the camp.

Why them, indeed. It’s still just them, and Link asks himself a lot why that is.

This isn’t a video game—they won’t find the answers carved into the trees, written in chalk along the sidewalks. Eventually, they stop asking those kinds of questions and just cope.

Today, it doesn’t stop Link from asking, “What do you miss most about Before?”

Rhett wipes his blood red mouth with the back of his hand and furrows his brow, sitting on the question for a beat. And then he says, “Girls,” with a waggle of his eyebrows.

Link thumps him on the chest with a snort. “Peanut butter,” he says, a bit wistfully. “Man, I swear if we ever find peanuts, I’m figuring out how to make it.”

“You need a cheesecloth and stuff, dude. It ain’t gonna happen.”

Link ignores him, shrugging his shoulders. Then, he says, “And you ain’t gonna find a girl, so.”

“A man can dream, Link,” Rhett tells him, carding his fingers through his hair.

They fall quiet for a while, listening to the wind pick up leaves as their feet crunch over the ones still scattered across the ground. They’re bright this time of year, oranges and reds and yellows that look like the fires they heard had destroyed everything further north.

That’s the thing about the end of the world, Link thinks—it has no manners. It is not delicate or beautiful or forgiving. And the people at the camp, a couple of weeks after the earthquake, told them rumors of what had wracked other parts of the nation. They said radio stations were reporting things as they happened, as best they could. Last that was reported, the south had flooded, the east was lost under twenty feet snow, and the middle of the country had been swept up in tornados miles wide.

It sounded like stories, made up biblical plagues to wipe the slate clean so God could start all over. Link didn’t believe a lick of it at first, choosing to think that this was just a freak accident, just horrible, terrible weather that their home was subjected to. California got earthquakes all the time, and this one was just the worst one possible. Things would go back to normal, eventually.

But then all the lights went out. Clean water was hard to come by. People were dying in their sleep for no foreseeable reason.

And then they started walking. Traces of ash littered the air the further north they got, so they took a turn, choosing to take their chances somewhere else. It was then that Rhett had started going quiet, saying words like _apocalypse_ and _Armageddon_ with such avarice in his voice that Link swore he felt it pierce through his resolve.

Rhett steps on a pile of leaves. Link cringes.

“Hey, when’s the last time we saw a shadow?”

Link can’t remember, he realizes. The shadows are finicky. They’re scared, a lot of the times they come across them. Memories are fuzzy these days, but he thinks about it and says, “At that river, you remember? But it ran off as soon as we saw it.”

Rhett hums, and goes quiet again.

Shadows, as far as they can tell, are literal shadows. They usually creep around if he and Rhett are quiet, will follow them as long as the two of them don’t acknowledge them. Link guesses that they’re mostly good. He hasn’t seen any of them do anything unsavory, so he has no reason to think otherwise. Rhett is skeptical. He swears they have an ulterior motive.

So when he says a simple, “Good,” Link isn’t surprised.

Most days when they come across them, Link is just happy to feel a little less alone. Even though they aren’t corporeal, aren’t _real_ for all he knows, it’s nice to have something else there. Especially when he doesn’t feel threatened by that thing.

Most things in this new world are dangerous, are not actively trying to hurt or maim them, but will not hesitate to do so if they get the chance. For instance, the moss, which is covering just about every inch of everything, will decompose human bodies at an alarming rate. It smells like rot, looks like hideous green carpet, and writhes slowly when they walk on it. It’s alive, and it’s everywhere, and they can’t escape it.

Animals are scarce. Mostly, they come across bones, which is macabre but fitting. Rhett will pick them up every so often, say they may need them later, for weapons or something. Link has a suspicion he just thinks they’re cool, but is too embarrassed to admit that. When they do come across an animal that’s alive, it’s almost always a reptile or a fish. Snakes hide under things, and lizards and frogs cling to the trees. It’s not hard to catch them, usually.

 Insects are plentiful, so they spend a lot of time snacking on those these days. Every time Link has to crunch through a beetle, he wants to cry, but he doesn’t have much of a choice. Honestly, he’d rather a beetle to a worm, and he stands by that argument regardless of what Rhett thinks.

There’s more leaves crunching, and he finally can’t take it anymore. The sun is starting to set, and he’s hungry and tired, so he snaps, “We’re stopping.”

“What?” Rhett’s picking at his cuticles, biting at the edges of his nails. It’s time for them to stop for the day.

“We’re done for today. We need sleep, and I can’t listen to those freakin’ leaves anymore,” he says, wiping a dirty hand over his face. They need to find water soon before his entire body starts buzzing with nervous energy.

Rhett doesn’t say anything, just puts a hand on the small of Link’s back and leads him into the woods so they can try to set up a fire, find some food before they crash.

It looks like it always does, sounds like it always does. But Link can’t help but feel off about it. Something is different. Maybe he’s just paranoid, but there’s an anxiety settling into his bones that he can’t shake as he gathers kindling, nabs a few bugs he sees as he does.

They meet back up by their stuff, and sit on the ground cross-legged.  

“Bugs again?” Rhett teases, groaning as he flicks the battered lighter they’ve been depending on this whole time. It’s probably the most important thing they’ve got on them: an old Zippo they grabbed from the camp before running. Link’s not sure how it’s still got fluid in it, but he knows better than to jinx them and ask.

The fire takes a second to light, but they’re old pros by now, and Rhett says, “The flint in this thing isn’t gonna last forever, you know?”

Link whacks him, furrowing his brow as he pulls out the little metal grate they’ve got in their packs for cooking. “Sure it will. Let my anxiety have a break for once, yeah?”

Rhett unfolds the bandana he uses to hold food and small animals they find. He’s got more berries, and two dead lizards. It’s not much, but it’ll hold them over until later, Link supposes. In the morning, he’ll have some rainwater they’ve got left in their water bottles and pretend it’s coffee. It’ll be great.

Rhett puts the lizards on the grate, separating the berries and the insects Link had managed to find into even portions for both of them.

“How long do you think this’ll last?”

“What do you mean?” It’s the first time Rhett has asked something like that, and it makes the hair on the back of Link’s neck stand up.

He shrugs, and Link can tell he’s uncomfortable. “How long do you think we’ll be able to survive in this?”

“Forever,” Link tells him. He’s certain of it. There’ll be an end, for sure, but the only end that really matters is theirs, right? Forever is relative. Their forever is going to be different than the earth’s forever, that’s something he’s sure of at this point. But it’ll still be forever.

Rhett doesn’t comment, just takes a deep breath.

Link stares down at the meager meal they’ve got spread out in front of them. He frowns.

Lizards are hard to eat. It’s hard to eat anything with an actual face, but Link puts aside his pickiness and trudges through the unpleasantness of it all for the sake of survival. Besides, tonight he’ll have fresh berries to wash away the mealy, earthy taste of everything else. So he has that to look forward to, at least.

As they eat, Rhett speaks up again. “You ever—I don’t know. I mean, do you ever wish for this to end? To just, not have to deal with all this anymore?”

Link hates this.

“No.”

If Rhett gets to avoid talking about Before, then Link can avoid talking about the end. And with an uncharacteristically quiet, “Alright,” putting the punctuation on their conversation, they finish eating.

They stay tentative and quiet as they unfurl the blankets they have rolled tight in their packs and curl in close to the small fire they’ve got going. The ground is damp, and the last thing Link remembers of the night is hoping he doesn’t wake up in wet clothes.

\--

He wakes up with a start. There’s a vice grip on his lungs, and he tries desperately to pull in air, but he can’t. Everything is blurry and dark, and a hand is gripping his thigh much, much too tightly. Through the ringing in his ears, he can hear screaming, loud and bellowing and pained.

It takes him a second, but he realizes it’s Rhett. He goes for gentle as he reaches over and shakes him, but he misses by a hair and ends up digging panicked fingers into Rhett’s shoulder and saying, a bit too loudly, “Rhett, wake up.”

And again, “Rhett. Wake up, come on. Quit yelling like that, man.”

His hands feel numb, his core trembling as he keeps failing in waking Rhett. But after a beat, another plea with his voice cracking in the middle, Rhett’s eyes pop open and he’s sucking in air desperately. A big hand flies up to Link’s chest and smacks him hard enough to knock the breath out of him.

“Gosh, Rhett,” Link groans in pain, plopping back down onto his back and rolling on his side away from Rhett.

His friend’s large frame is shaking, his chest heaving as he breathes, and he mutters, “It was just a nightmare.”

Link scoffs, rubbing at his chest. “Some nightmare.”

“Yeah, well. They aren’t usually pleasant, man.” His voice is flat, thick with sleep and fear, and Link feels bad about snapping at him. “I gotta whiz. I’ll be back.”

Link knows he’s just going wander, despite how dangerous it might be. It’s his way of clearing his thoughts, of processing, and Link can’t stand it. When he does this, it just makes Link’s anxiety worse. He worries any time Rhett isn’t near, any time they’re separated.

Link’s never been good at being alone.

And in the woods, when the whole world is a shell of itself, eaten alive by moss and vines, he’s never felt _more_ alone as he listens to the echoes of Rhett’s screams fade into his thick footsteps, crunching through leaves.

His jaw tingles in annoyance, and he stands up with a sigh to follow on shaky legs. The ground squelches below his feet. He doesn’t wonder why.

There’s a beat, a moment, where he’s staring at Rhett’s silhouette off in the distance, big and looming and just a few feet ahead of him in the dark. And then, suddenly, with a head rush unlike anything he’s ever felt before, his body is colliding with the ground, with the _moss_. He’s rolling, ungraceful and too quick to stop himself, smelling nothing but decay as the moss encourages him along. In the distance, he hears a shout that has the shape of his name.

Falling isn’t what he thought it would be. The air in his lungs is just gone, his brain rewiring too quickly for him to react at all, and he feels each impact with a jarring, stomach lurching crack. There are rocks that he’s landing on, and everything aches as he finally lands, his fingers unfurling from the fists they’ve made. There’s blood—he can feel it dripping down his face, but he doesn’t know which part of him it’s coming from.

And when he’s still, he can’t help how he laughs. Maybe it’s the wrong reaction, but he can’t help it. It bubbles out of him in waves, watery and too thick, and by the time he hears Rhett’s anxious voice calling for him, he’s shaking, body going into shock.

It feels like forever before he hears Rhett’s feet sliding through the mud and moss, a lot more gracefully than Link managed to do. The leaves crunch around him.

“Link,” Rhett says, his mouth working around the syllables in a frightened slur. He kneels, and Link can hear how hard he’s breathing. “Link, _shit_. What do I do, man?”

Link is almost certain Rhett’s crying, but he can’t open his eyes enough to see. His throat won’t work around real words.

Dying isn’t what he thought it would be.

“What do I do, Link?”

In a terrifying, dizzy moment, Rhett’s arms snake around him, and he’s being tugged onto his feet. He hurts, the movement jerking him too hard, ripping a scream from him that’s undignified and way too loud for this time of night. Through it, he hears Rhett apologizing profusely.

“Stop,” Link says, shaking his head. “I can’t.”

“Sure,” Rhett insists. “There’s a—the road is right over there, we can make it.”

He’s spinning, burning all over, and he’s certain he’s broken his leg. The blood is coming from his lip and his nose, he realizes, and he wipes a shaky hand over his face in a half-hearted attempt at cleaning himself up.

He hadn’t even seen the cliff. It all just looked like moss. He shouldn’t have followed Rhett.

Walking is tough, but not impossible, and he clings to that realization as every steps sucks the breath directly from his lungs with a sting through his chest. They don’t have to go very far, but Link’s knuckles are white where they’re curled into Rhett’s shirt, body desperate for support from something other than itself. Rhett is a concrete pillar in a raging storm, trembling under the surface tension.

Their things are still neatly piled right where they left them, and Rhett props him against a tree while he gathers everything as quickly as he can. The fire is down to embers, but Rhett still kicks dirt onto it just in case, cursing under his breath as he does. Wearing two backpacks that are heavy and full, Rhett heaves Link back onto his feet, another yell tearing its way through Link’s lungs as he’s manhandled.

“Come on, bo,” Rhett mumbles, sweaty hands slipping on Link’s skin. “Come on, not like this.”

The problem is that everything is spinning, and he can feel his legs giving out underneath him.

They don’t wander, but they don’t have a goal, and Link can tell that Rhett is holding out hope that they’ll come across shelter somewhere so he can tend to Link’s wounds away from the elements.

Away from the moss.

Shelter is important. It’s harder to heal huddled up together, eating bugs and drinking rainwater. He needs a sturdy foundation under his feet, a roof over his head, a fire on ground that isn’t wet.

It’s hard to breathe, getting harder, and Rhett really should just drop him somewhere. It’s not that they’re unsafe, but it’s stupid to waste supplies on him. The end is all about survival, and Link just isn’t doing too great of a job with that, currently. But Rhett’s still got a chance, got the skills and the tools, and Link is weighing him down.

His hands are shaking when he pushes at Rhett, spits a mouthful of bloody spit onto the concrete below them, and dry heaves immediately after. If Rhett lets go of him, he’s going to collapse. For a second, Link thinks he might, but his hands stay on Link, holding him carefully, encouraging as they both stumble along the road. Their shoes skid along rocks, and Rhett says, “There’s a house over there.”

Link can’t turn his head enough to see where he’s looking. He trusts Rhett enough to get him there, not to lie to him about something like this. Even so, his heart starts fluttering in his chest. He can feel the beats against his chest in time with their feet sliding along the concrete.

He hears the crunch of leaves one more time before they meet real, actual grass. It’s alive and green and slick with dew. Twice, as they walk, Rhett nearly slips, grips Link  tighter with a panicked, “Oh, shit.” 

And then, as the ringing in his ears gets louder, the chirping of crickets seems to quiet around them, Link hears what is unmistakably the sound of a child’s voice say, “He looks like he needs help.”


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re lucky the moss didn’t get to him.”

Her voice has been ringing in Link’s ears for several long minutes. She’s got a paste, thick and aromatic that she’s been rubbing into his skin, formed in a pile on Rhett’s bandana. Her thumbs are working circles over his wrists, right over his pulse. And then she _tsks_ under her breath.

“Let’s hope this takes,” she says, and just like that, the cool touch of her skin against his is gone, and he’s left trembling again. The spots where she’s rubbed the paste are warm, and everything else is cold. “I think it will, but they could decide not to help him.”

Rhett’s voice is low, gruff, when he says, “What are you talking about? Who are you? Where are your parents?”

Rapid-fire questions that leave Link a little bit dizzy, it’s nerves manifesting themselves as defense. The young girl just looks up at him, smiles gently, and says, “My name is Amelia.” She rubs her hands together, getting the excess paste off, then smoothes out the dress she’s wearing. “You’re Rhett. That’s Link. He’s very hurt, so I’m trying to help him, using the plants. But they don’t always want to help.”

Link can see Rhett’s eyes get big. In a heap, he collapses onto the floor, head in his hands. Through his own bleary eyes, he watches the big frame of his best friend shudder with sobs that he can’t seem to help. Everything comes tumbling out of him at once, the emotional high of everything that’s been happening finally rattling through his bones, lacing through his ribs, and ripping a loud, choked sob from him in the middle of this house.

And this house—it feels like a mirage. This shouldn’t be real, not in the middle of _this_ desert.  

For the most part, it’s intact. The floors aren’t cracked, the roof isn’t caving in. There’s paint chipping off the walls like a peeling sunburn, and vines have crept up to the ceilings, but it’s livable. It’s not nearly as hollow as the two of them are right now. It’s got less secrets rattling around in it than they do, and everything feels very nearly more alive than Link feels right now.

From his perch in the corner of the room, he croaks, “Where are your parents at?”

She turns to him, that same gentle smile on her face, and she tells him, “I don’t know. How are you feeling?”

“About the same.”

“You’re talking now; so, you must be feeling a little better, at least,” she says, not unkind or belittling, just an observation.

He wants to ask how she knows, why he should trust her judgment, but she walks closer, reaches out to press the back of her hand to his forehead. She hums under her breath, and leaves the conversation at that.

Too tired to pry, Link tries calling for Rhett gently. He doesn’t look up, but he does fling out one of his hands, looking for comfort. Link laces his fingers through Rhett’s, and leans his head back against the wall.

The air feels cooler, less humid. There’s sweat slicking every inch of his body, just like it usually is, but he can breathe easier in here. He thinks it’s got to do with being in a building so put together. Upright walls and a whole roof really make a significant difference. They’re floating in a new space, in here. He can almost pretend that it’s Before again.

And Amelia, who smears more of that pale paste across her dark fingers, reaches for Link again. It’s cool this time, feeling almost like menthol, smelling so much like tobacco that Link is transported to another time in his life, another time when he was sick, but got better.

God, he got better.

This time, she’s rubbing the paste along his forehead, her thumbs working carefully, and he notices her mouth moving.

He tries listening, but he can’t catch any sounds at all.

“It’s a spell.” Her hands fall, and she sits cross-legged in front of him, her yellow dress making a soft sound as she does. “I can teach you once you’re better.”

“I don’t—“ and he pauses. “Where’d you learn how to do it?”

Her tiny shoulders shrug. “I didn’t learn. I’ve just always known.”

Link nods his head, letting his eyes fall shut when his vision swims. He slips his glasses off his face, rubs at the bridge of his nose with a groan. With a realization, he admits, “I guess I am feeling better.”

“They decided to help—that’s good. It means they like you,” Amelia tells him. Then, a bit ominously, “And that’s a really good thing, Link.”

“How’d you know who we are? That’s a little creepy,” Rhett finally says, his voice wet and thick.

At that, she laughs, high and honest. It’s sweet, almost, and Link finds himself opening his eyes to watch her.

She’s tiny, can’t be more than nine or ten. Clean and healthy looking, her eyes are bright, almost golden, and her hair is thick, curled in tight ringlets around her head. Planted right in front of him, she looks at Link as she giggles. And then she shrugs again.

“I don’t know. I won’t have many answers for you. I’m sorry.” She scoops up more of that paste from Rhett’s bandana, says, “Give me your hand, and rub this on your chest. I’ll go get you some water.”

The paste is warm to the touch, and gritty in a way he hadn’t realized. Lifting his shirt is harder than it should be, and stretching hurts.

When she leaves, Rhett looks at him. His face is serious, and his brow is furrowed in a fear that Link hasn’t seen in a really long time. He watches Link rub the paste into his skin wearing that intense expression the whole time.

There are heavy, violent bruises decorating his chest like roadmaps. Huge blotches of his skin turning dark shades of purple already, and he wonders how far he fell, how many ribs are broken inside of him. Remembering the mouthful of blood he’d spat onto the ground, he vaguely wonders just how bad his internal bleeding was, and if Amelia stopped that, too.

After a quiet second, Rhett says, “I don’t like this. Any of it.”

“She’s helping,” Link tells him, head lolling back against the wall. He’s exhausted. Everything in him aches and burns and he just wants to sleep now that he’s pretty sure he won’t die if he tries. “It’s pretty weird, but what isn’t these days, man?”

“She’s a little girl in the forest who knows our names, and you aren’t even a little freaked out?”

Link can’t help it when he chuckles sourly, the brunt of it catching in his throat and making him cough. When his lungs stop burning, he just says, “Don’t forget the part where she’s magic.” His words drip with sarcasm, but there’s a nagging in his head that reminds him he can breathe again. Letting his eyes slip shut, he listens to the rasping of his throat in the quiet bubble of this house. He shrugs, says, “I’ll freak out later. Right now, I just want that water she offered and a good night’s sleep in a house that isn’t going to eat us alive.”

Defeated and frustrated, Rhett lets his head hang between his shoulders, heaves a heavy sigh.

Link knows that Rhett has to figure this out. It’s a pathological need to understand what’s happening to him, but Link is fine with accepting this for what it is right now. Later, when his limbs don’t feel like they’ve just been ripped from his body and his spine doesn’t feel twisted up inside of him, he’ll do his share of panicking, of asking too many questions and getting frustrated when he doesn’t get answers. But right now, he can’t.

He just can’t.

So when Amelia shows back up, a wooden bowl of water in her tiny hands, Link accepts it gratefully, takes it from her in his own trembling hands and struggles to get it to his lips. Faintly, as he gets his mouth to the rim, he hears Rhett mumble, “Let me help,” and then there are hands taking the bowl from his own, holding it in place as he takes in huge, gulping mouthfuls of water.

He could drown in this right now, and he wouldn’t care. It’s clean and fresh and there’s _so much_ of it. As he pulls away with a gasp, Amelia tells them, “I can get more, if you need. Drink as much as you want. You both probably need it.”

Rhett finishes off the water, and waves off Amelia’s attempt at getting them more. Kindly, she tells them to get some sleep.

“I’ve got to go scavenge.”

And then she’s gone, before either of them can even open their mouths. In a flourish of yellow fabric, she’s out of the front door, the scent of tobacco still heavy in the air, the stench of their sweat and fear hanging thickly between them in the clear air of the house. Everything Link is touching is covered in the sticky sheen of Rhett’s fear and his own pain, and without Amelia here in front of them, the anxiety settles in.

Maybe Rhett is right. Maybe they should be more concerned about just accepting this much help from a child in the woods, rubbing some sort of paste she made onto Link’s body and mumbling nonsense under her breath. Maybe he should be convincing Rhett to leave, but he can barely keep his eyes open anymore, so instead he just says, “In the morning,” when Rhett looks over at him, eyes full to the brim with concern.

The last thing he sees before his eyes flutter shut, exhaustion finally getting its grip around his throat, is Rhett’s nod, his fingers carding through his own hair in a nervous tick.

\--

Link wakes up to low, murmuring voices and sunlight slowly filling the room around him.

He sleeps a lot lighter than he did Before. The slightest of sounds wake him up now, an evolutionary trait of protecting himself when he’s vulnerable.

He separates the two voices in his head, listens carefully and recognizes Rhett’s low tones, his tired voice rumbling through Amelia’s higher-pitched one. Words aren’t easy to make out, not when his head is this fuzzy.

Not until he feels something hit him on the side of the face, and hears Rhett say, “I know you’re awake. You made that sound you always make.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Link tells him.

When he cracks an eye open, Amelia is politely looking between them, looking far more awake than either of them. After a pause, she asks, “How are you feeling?”

This time, he says, “Alright. A little sore.” And it’s true—he aches all over, but in general, he’s feeling marginally better than he was when they stumbled upon Amelia and this house.

This morning, with the adrenaline worn off and his head not spinning any longer, he remembers the sickly feeling of falling, of rolling and colliding with everything hidden under that thick, terrible moss. His memories are dotted with Rhett’s hands slipping over his skin as he lead him through the woods, to the road again, and pointed out a house in the distance.

From there, it’s fuzzy. There are small hands, grabbing onto him, a drop in his stomach as he was lead through more trees, more piles of crunchy leaves, down a driveway.

And then, it slots back into place, into Amelia and their first conversation, into her steady hands rubbing that paste where he hurt the most.

He’s back on track now. The house smells like morning, earthy like plants and dirt, damp with dew. With a groan, he reaches to his side and grabs whatever it was Rhett had thrown at him, only to wrap his fingers around a bandana. It’s the black one, the one Rhett uses to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and with a sound of disgust, Link sits up, throws it back at him.

“That’s nasty, man!” he shouts, furiously wiping his hands on his pants. Rhett’s warm chuckles fill the spaces in his lungs. And then, half a second later, he forgets, and scrubs a hand over his face, scratches through the scraggly beard he’s got going on.

They both look rough, he knows. He’s caught sight of his own reflection a few times, murky and damn near invisible in puddles of water. Rhett looks so unlike himself that, if not for Link knowing him as well as he does, it would be hard to believe he’s the same person from Before. It wouldn’t take much for someone to convince him he’d been stuck with someone with a strikingly Rhett-like personality this whole time.

And when Rhett digs through the backpack at his side, hands Link the toothbrush they’ve been sharing this whole time, Link takes it with a nod in thanks.

They’ve got a routine, even in this. He likes routines—they make things easier, make the day feel right. At the very top of their routine is using water and a toothbrush and trying their damndest to keep their hygiene in check. It’s not the same as toothpaste, but it’s something, and Link makes sure to brush extra long to make up for it. They use the white bandana to wash their faces, ringing it out and tying it off the handle of the backpack to dry during the day. By the end of it all, Link always feels better, more alive, more _human_.

His routine is important to him.

So this little gesture, he knows, is Rhett’s way of checking up on him. And when he gets up on wobbly legs to go outside to pee and start this routine, he puts a hand on Rhett’s shoulder, squeezes.

“There’s water in the kitchen,” Amelia says as he’s almost out the door, and Link had almost forgotten she was even there.

He tells her, “Uh, thanks. I’ll be right back.”

Toothbrush in hand, he stops in his tracks as soon as the door is shut behind him.

Something feels wrong. _He_ feels wrong being out here. There’s a weight on his chest, a thrumming in his veins that wasn’t there before. When he looks out across the expanse of trees and moss in front of him, he realizes that things even look different. He can’t place it. But it’s different now, somehow. It’s not a fog or a haze or a glow, not something he can tangibly feel—it’s more of a weight, a thickness coating everything now.

It’s almost as if every inch of the world is breathing along with him, breath for breath, his chest rising with the crust of the earth, falling with the crashing of the waves.

He shakes his head, sets about using the bowl of water he’d snagged to wet the toothbrush.

Subtlety was never his strong suit, and he’s never claimed to be graceful or reserved, but even he has a moment where he thinks twice about relieving himself off the back porch of Amelia’s home. So he finds a tree, multitasks his way through his morning routine, and ignores the fluttering in his stomach every time he hears so much as the leaves rustling.

He can’t put his finger on it. There’s no single thing that he can pinpoint, can put the blame on; it’s just off today. Maybe it’s because of whatever Amelia did to help him. Maybe he’s just not ready to be outside again yet. But something isn’t right, and he doesn’t know exactly what to do about it.

What he does know is that Rhett’s voice behind him is startling.

He spins, wipes a hand over his face, and gives him a shaky smile. “Hey, man.”

“You okay? Feeling any better?”

Without Amelia around, he feels more comfortable in his discomfort so he shrugs his shoulders. “I feel weird,” he says. “But not bad?”

Rhett makes a sound like he gets it, nods carefully as he stuffs his hands in his pockets. “I think we should trust her,” Rhett tells him. Link furrows his brow, opening his mouth to say something, but Rhett cuts him off. “I know. I—look, I don’t know why, but I feel like we should trust her. She, uh. She told me this morning that she wants to teach you some spells?”

It makes Link laugh. This whole thing makes him want to laugh, from the very beginning of it all. He thinks he’s had a laugh perched under his chin for a really long time—a hard, bitter, angry laugh. Sometimes he wonders if things are ever going to get better. He wonders if there’s anyone else out there.

Amelia is the first person they’ve come across since Before, and she’s a magical child living on her own in the forest.

His life made a little bit of sense once.

But now, all he can do is suck in a breath, close his eyes, and exhale heavily. And then he says, “Okay. She can teach me whatever fairytale horse shit she thinks muttering at some medicine does.”

Above everything else, he trusts Rhett. So if Rhett thinks they should trust Amelia, then he’ll try his best. All he gets in response is a grunt, Rhett shaking his head, and saying, “Whatever, man.”  

He finishes up, feeling Rhett’s eyes on him the whole time, and before they walk back into the house, he pulls Rhett close. It’s not often that they ask for physical contact, but neither of them deny each other when it does come up; so it’s not a surprise when Rhett allows him to nuzzle his face into his shoulder. He wraps his arms around Link, holds him close, and they stand there for a few moments too long. The buzzing in Link’s veins quiets a little, the anxiety rolling down his spine in itchy, fuzzy waves lessening for just a moment.

Right before they part, Rhett murmurs, “We’ll be okay.”

Link pats him on the chest. “Yeah.”

Inside, things are almost too quiet. Amelia is in the big, open room they slept in, all the windows and doors open. She’s got her eyes closed, is muttering under her breath, a bundle of supplies sitting in front of her.

Without opening her eyes, she says, “I can teach you, if you’d like. It’s easy.”

“Who are you?” He’s sure he asked her this already, but now it seems even more important. This all seems so, incredibly important all of a sudden. Things are different now, and he doesn’t know why.

Amelia just shrugs. “I’m Amelia.”

Again, dissatisfied, “Who _are_ you, Amelia? Where are your parents?”

“I don’t have parents,” she says. Her eyes open, and her pupils are blown. She takes a deep breath, gathers the supplies a little closer together, and pushes them into the concrete with her palm. “I don’t know who I am. I’m just Amelia.”

“How old are you?”

“I don’t know.” Link can hear the frustration in her voice, can hear how her words grow shaky. He doesn’t care. In the pause, she says, “Who are you, Link Neal?”

“I know who I am,” he says, cut and dry. “I know who I am. Who are you?”

“Amelia,” she says again. The items on the ground, which were mostly leaves and seeds, leave a thick, dark green paste on the ground. Amelia looks up at him. “This will help with any pain you might have still.”

“I don’t want it,” he says. His stomach is rolling, and he just wants to leave. He doesn’t want to trust her, doesn’t want to stick around anymore. He wants to leave. “It’s just leaves.”

Behind him, Rhett warns, “ _Link_.”

“No.” It’s not about Rhett anymore. This is about Amelia. This is about the pile of smashed up leaves she’s trying to give him. This is about the ache in his shoulder and the bruises littering his torso like physical manifestations of his anger. This is about how Rhett doesn’t want to talk about Before and how Link doesn’t want to talk about the end.

“It’s okay,” Amelia says. “If you don’t want it, it’s okay. I’m not mad.”

“You don’t have a reason to get mad!” Link tells her, scrubbing a hand over his face. He can feel his temper in his hands, in his temples, in the tip of his tongue. It wraps itself around his wrists and ribbons down into his pulse.

Sucking in a breath, he exhales heavily, and shouts, “Who are you, Amelia?” It bellows out of his chest, rushes through him like a punch. The house—he swears the house bellows back, and he recoils, stumbles back until he’s hitting Rhett’s chest.

Echoes of what Link can only describe as a scream, high and shrieking, bounce off the walls of the house. All the hair on Link’s arms stand up, every inch of him going cold. He slumps into Rhett, feeling his arms slotting up under Link’s own to hold him in place. He can feel Rhett trembling.

After a pause, a moment for Link to catch his breath and Rhett’s hands to steady him so he can stand on his own two feet, Amelia looks him directly in the eyes.

“I’m Amelia,” she says. “I’m just Amelia.”


	3. Chapter 3

Ahead of them, the sun sets. 

Link watches the sky fade away, smudges of inky black curling into frame. It’s littered with vibrant blues and purples and pinks, more beautiful than it has any right to be, and he feels his chest grow tight with upset. 

Nothing about this should be beautiful. 

He’s living in a Salvador Dali painting, and he doesn’t exactly know where to run his fingers anymore. Everything leaves behind a slick, oily feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

When he stiffens, he feels Rhett’s hand thump him on the back of the thigh, and he mumbles out, “You okay?” 

Link nods, turning his attention back to where Amelia is carefully crushing a handful of aromatic herbs into the ground as she murmurs a spell under her breath. The rock she’s using is flat, fits in her palm snuggly. 

Bay leaves, chamomile, and mint-- and Link knows better than to ask where she got any of these things in the middle of a crumbling earth. He knows better than to question the validity of any of this with the ringing of that scream still in his head a week later. 

The house still hasn’t settled around him, and he’s been finding any excuse to be outside lately. But now, with Amelia’s hands working quickly, her eyes closed as she works through quick gibberish, Link can hear that faint sound again, like he’s being haunted. 

Something about it feels like a warning, so he likes to side-step it as much as possible. Amelia doesn’t seem too keen on arguing the point. Link keeps a wide berth and she lets him. 

Rhett seems fine. He’s leaning in, listening and watching as carefully as possible. And Link, realizing she’s stopped talking, checks back in at the last second. 

The wooden bowl she’s got placed in front of them starts sweating, droplets of water building along the sides. Amelia clears her throat and says, “It doesn’t always work. The plants don’t always show up.” 

She traces the tip of her finger in the dirt they’re sitting in, doodling idly. It looks almost like nerves. 

After a beat, Rhett breaks the silence, “What can you tell us about the plants, Amelia?” 

He whole body inflates with a sigh, and in that one second, she looks like a child in a way she doesn’t always. As she deflates, she says, “They aren’t happy.” 

“We can tell,” Link says. His voice is rough, but he offers up a grin in contrast. 

“They’ll help, though. If you ask nicely.” The palm of her hand brushes her shaky drawing away, and she traces a daisy in its wake. Furrowing her brow, she says, “How have you two survived?” 

It takes both of them off-guard, Rhett straightening up and Link sinking in on himself, because they don’t talk about this. Link draws his legs up, wraps his arms around his knees, and listens to Rhett tell her, “We don’t really know. We just kept moving.” 

Link mumbles, “Eating bugs and staying away from that damn moss.” 

He feels a small, warm hand press to his arm in an attempt at comfort, and Amelia says, “The plants would have killed you if they wanted to.” 

“Do you think anyone else is alive? Have you seen anyone?” Link swears Rhett sounds hopeful when he asks, but he knows Rhett would deny it until he was blue in the face. It’s such a moment of humanity, a gut-sinking feeling, that Link feels his throat tighten. 

They miss people, of course, but they don’t talk about Before for a reason. 

Amelia mimics Link, knees coming up until she can rest her arms on them, her chin on her arms, folding in on herself. She looks so small, and Link’s chest aches. 

She doesn’t answer. 

Rhett says, “I don’t know why us. We-- uh, I ask that question a lot.” 

“Never ask  _ why _ , Rhett,” Amelia says. “Only how. And then keep doing whatever the answer is.” 

The bowl is nearly half full now, and Link reaches out to grab for it, careful not to slosh it around too much. He asks, “What else do you know how to do?” 

She stutters through, “I can-- I can teach you most of them. Spells are easy.” 

“But the plants need to help us with them, right?” He’s cautious, but Link brings the lip of the bowl to his mouth, taking a sip. It’s fresh and clean, and he groans disbelievingly as he passes the bowl to Rhett. It’s still sweating, but Link doesn’t much care. “What if they decide not to help?” 

“It’s hit or miss,” Amelia admits. “Sometimes you can find the plants you need, and sometimes you can’t. Spells are almost like asking for permission. If-- By doing them, you’re involving the plants. They want to be in charge.” 

“So, they’re sentient,” Rhett says, flat and unsure for the first time. 

Link watches Amelia’s eyebrows shoot up. “Yeah. I don’t know how else to explain it. All I know is that I need chamomile for a water spell, and I find it sometimes.” She unfolds herself again, doodles in the dirt to distract herself. “I have a garden I go to, and every now and then all of my plants will die. I do a spell, and the next day, they’re growing again.” 

She shrugs her shoulders, and the three of them settle into a violently loud silence. 

Amelia is the one to eventually break the silence. She tells them, “The Earth has always been alive, and people have always been killing it. The Earth creates, and people find ways to destroy. Now, the Earth creates and destroys all on its own.” 

“Are you suggesting that  _ plants  _ caused the apocalypse.” Rhett’s got an eyebrow raised, is looking at Amelia with a cocked head. 

She smiles carefully, shrugs her shoulders. “Look around you. What’s left?” 

“Us,” Link offers. “We’re left.” 

“And the plants,” Amelia agrees. “Well, the Earth, really. I doubt it’s plants everywhere.” 

Link gets the point she’s making, but it’s not something he can digest easily. None of this makes any sense-- he doesn’t say the word  _ ‘apocalypse’  _ and he doesn’t talk about the end because he doesn’t want to believe a single bit of it. This isn’t the end. This isn’t plants taking over the world. 

Something happened and now they’re here. That’s what he knows, what he can believe, what he can admit. The rest of it is all subjective. It’s all that bullshit that Rhett likes to speculate about. There are more people out there, and they’ll come across them. There’s a life left to live, and they’ll find it. The plants aren’t sentient and this child that’s teaching them to crush leaves together is just a child. 

That’s the easy route. 

That’s the thinking he wants to still have. 

And he clings to it desperately, avoiding eye-contact with Rhett so that he won’t see Rhett’s fear and mirror it. 

But, really, he gets it. 

He knows. 

He’ll accept it eventually. 

For now, he watches the sun set. He watches the sky swallow itself up whole and envies it for just a second too long. 

Rhett had asked him that night if he ever wished for this to end, and Link had clammed up. The question curls itself in Link’s stomach lately, churning and twisting, and he knows it’s there, constantly. He doesn’t have an answer anymore. There’s a slick sheen of indifference over it now, because he still aches and he’s still angry, and he doesn’t know where to go with any of it. 

There isn’t anywhere to go with it. So he lets it fester, lets it sit in the bile and acid of his stomach and tampers it down whenever it starts to boil. 

And when Amelia hands him supplies, small hands sure and still, her voice steady as she walks him through the mess of syllables that is the spell, Link feels himself start to crack at the surface. 

He tries, uses the flat rock Amelia had been using, crushes the leaves until they’re wet and gooey, a muddy pile of dark green on the ground in front of him. His mouth works shakily around the spell, and there’s a ringing in his head when he notices the bowl starts sweating again. 

Next to him, he faintly hears Rhett say, “Holy shit.” There’s a familiar hand patting his thigh, and then, “Good job, man.” 

It makes Link a little nauseous. But he smiles, turns his head, and tells himself that he’s going to get over this. He’s going to accept this. 

He’s going to stop feeling like this is wrong, somehow. 

Inside his chest, his lungs ache. And when he says, “I think it’s time to head home,” something in the distance screams, a confirmation of his anxiety. 

The cloak of darkness is never a good thing. It echoes their sounds, leaves them open and vulnerable. This new world is a slick pile of threats, hidden under every surface. He gets up on shaky legs, offering Amelia and Rhett each a hand to help them stand, too, and he steadies himself as best he can. He catches his breath he didn’t know he was losing, and wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans. 

Right at the beginning of all of this, Rhett spent a whole day screaming, fighting anyone he came across, throwing anything he could get his hands on. Link let him. Thinking back on it, it was probably helpful, it probably kept everything that Link is feeling now at bay. 

As they walk, none of them talk, and Link uses the silence to fuel his discomfort. Maybe if he lives in this he can get over it. Maybe he should scream, should punch something. He can feel the rage in his throat, his fists. He can feel it in his chest. 

But he doesn’t have the luxury of walking away from his destruction. Hell, they’d spent four days running from the heavy footfalls of Rhett’s anger. They’d had no choice. And now they have nowhere to go. Whatever bed he makes, he’s got to lay in it. 

This isn’t like Before. This isn’t like when this began. It’s not that one night, where they were trying to find anything, a semblance of structure in the middle of the chaos and Rhett had screamed this throat raw. He can’t scream. He can’t fight. He can’t throw things. 

They might not be coming across bodies not yet eaten by the moss every other step they take, but Link still feels like losing his shit now would be unwarranted and unappreciated. He can’t imagine a scenario that it would go well.

And, if he’s honest, he doesn’t think he can stomach the screaming, anymore. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a big thanks to [heatgeneratingtechniques](http://heatgeneratingtechniques.tumblr.com/) for reading over this chapter for me!

In the end, it’s the screaming that wakes him up. He doesn’t tell Rhett, and he doesn’t need to tell Amelia. It’s sharp and high, and it blends, just for a second, with the screaming in his dream. 

They’re running now. They’re running  _ again _ . He doesn’t hear their feet crunching through leaves but he does still hear the screaming, the frantic sound of Amelia telling them they needed to get out, fast. Her eyes were wet and wide, and Link can still taste the bile that rose to the back of his throat at the panic, the screaming. 

“The house,” Rhett keeps saying, his chest heaving through the words as they run. “Did you see the house?” 

“Yeah,” Link tells him, ushering him along as best he can through the moss and trees and the fucking  _ screaming _ , gosh. 

It’s not dark anymore, the sky painted a familiar orange and pink. The leaves they skid through are similar shades. Everything blurs together in front of him until he can’t make any of it out, fuzzy streaks of color amidst the flashes of vibrant green moss. The rolling in his stomach gives everything a sickly yellow hue, and he knows his hands are shaking as he puts one on the small of Rhett’s back and tells him he’s gotta stop. 

They stand in still for a moment. Everything seems to stand still with them. 

The tree behind him is damp when he leans against it, but he doesn’t care, easing his pounding head back and shutting his eyes. 

Rhett says, “The fucking house, Link.” 

“I know, Rhett,” he says. He knows. He saw. The vines were moving, climbing further, and the walls were crumbling. Amelia stood in front of it all, in front of them, trembling and angry and afraid. It was too familiar for them, a ghost of the beginning of all of this. The only difference is there was this child, too small for any of this to make sense anymore, and Link can’t shake the image of her screaming at them, the veins in her neck standing out as the sound of her voice melded with the sounds Link’s been hearing all this time. 

And god, the house. 

The house was falling apart, cracking at the seams, vines finally taking over like they’d done to nearly every other building they’ve ever come across. It was a moment of panic, of anger at this place that had become a safe haven, a roof over their heads for the past couple of weeks, falling apart before their eyes. 

At the very moment he started running, he began worrying about Amelia. He’s not sure what to do with that worry, where to place it, so he leaves it be for now. 

The panic, at least, he knows what to do about. 

So he sucks in a steadying breath and grabs Rhett, buries his face in his shoulder and wraps him up tight just so he can feel all the muscles in his body relax as he settles into the embrace. Standing in the middle of the moss, he finds his footing again just like this. 

Rhett, sturdy and solid and real, splays his fingers across Link’s back and murmurs, “We’re okay. We’re alright.” 

It’s aching and soaring and spreading like wildfire through Link’s veins as they stand. All the anger he’s been holding, the fear and the panic and everything else comes flying out of him in a choked sob that catches in his throat. His eyes burn, his throat closes, and the vines from the house climb up his legs, wrap around him until he’s screaming too loudly. 

Rhett lets him. 

The echoes of his voice settle around them until the screams he’s been hearing are replaced with the cadence of his own voice. 

When that settles, nothing screams back this time. 

Link pulls away, feeling empty and shaken, and Rhett puts two firm hands on his shoulders, looks him dead in the eyes. “Are you okay?” 

“No.” He wipes his palms down his thighs, jerking Rhett’s hands off of him. “I don’t wanna talk about it.” 

It feels like there’s dust in his eyes, like he’s been rung out and threaded through the slots of a wooden fence. He’s got splinters dotted through his skin and his bones are full of thorns. He doubts he’s going to bloom. 

“You think she’s dead?” 

It’s like drowning. 

He doesn’t want to talk about it. So he says, “No.” And then, when he really thinks about it for a second, “I think if she dies, we’ll know.” 

Amelia had told them a few days before that they needed to keep moving. She’d said that things were only going to work if they kept moving, and Link didn’t know what she meant at the time. But now he thinks he might. 

For this to work, for this new world to let them live in it, they can’t sit still. That’s when the moss gets you, when the vines creep their way into everything around you. You lose your balance, your space, your sanity. 

He wonders if Amelia is going to collapse, if she’s going to start foaming at the mouth, if the moss is going to get her. This all feels so much like the beginning, the last time they saw something explode around them, and the body count then was so high he hasn’t been able to see anything else when he closes his eyes; and he can’t help but think that this is going to be the same thing. He isn’t going to tell Rhett that, though. 

He’ll keep it to himself, keep them moving.

Link pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes until he sees stars, and when he finally opens them again, Rhett is staring at him intently. After a pause, Rhett says, “You gotta tell me what’s wrong, man.” 

“I ain’t gotta tell you shit,” Link says, distracting himself by wiping his glasses on the edge of his shirt. 

He feels a shove, and right as he’s about to open his mouth to shout, Rhett’s beating him to the chase, saying, “Tell me what’s wrong!” 

“Fuck you,” Link tells him through gritted teeth. He spins around. “Do you mean what’s wrong other than everything we just saw? You mean how the world is ending, and the only people we keep coming across just keep dying?” 

“No, I don’t mean any of that. What’s wrong with  _ you _ ?” His nostrils are flared, his hands clenched in fists at his sides. He’s clenching his jaw and breathing heavily. “You’ve been in your head so much lately, and I can tell something is wrong. So just tell me. We don’t get to keep secrets anymore, man.” 

“You mean  _ I  _ don’t get to keep secrets anymore.”

Rhett takes a step back, his shoulders dropping, and he squints his eyes. “You think I keep secrets from you?” 

“Don’t bullshit me, Rhett.” Everything in him aches. This fight has been brewing in his chest for a while now, and he’s ready for it. Part of him thinks he was looking for it all this time. “You never want to talk about anything.” 

“Because it hurts to talk about things, Link,” Rhett says. “But I let you know when I’m not okay.” 

Link takes a step forward. “Yeah. Sure, man. Sure.” He nods his head, bites the inside of his cheek. 

“What was it about Amelia that you didn’t like?” Rhett asks. “No bullshit now, Link. Let’s air all of this out.” 

Link sucks in a breath, sharp and biting and filling his lungs so much it hurts. On the exhale, he says, “I didn’t like that she could talk about all of this like it was real. I didn’t like the screaming, I didn’t like the-- the fucking  _ magic  _ or whatever.” 

“You didn’t like that she was helping us. Or that she didn’t live in denial like you do,” Rhett says. He runs a hand over his face. It isn’t a question. He doesn’t  _ ask _ , and he doesn’t have to. 

“Why won’t you talk about Before?” 

Rhett laughs into his palm, shakes his head. Muffled through his skin, he says, “Because I can’t stand to think about all of it.” 

For a second, there’s a silence that falls over them. There’s no screaming, no talking, no sounds of life around them at all. And Rhett chokes, swallows it down, and tells Link, “I’m just trying to get through this, man. I’m trying to keep both of us alive.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I can’t watch you die, too!” It’s loud, the loudest he’s heard Rhett be in a lifetime, and it shakes Link to his core. Rhett’s face is red, and his eyes are wet. 

Link takes a step back. He sucks in another deep breath. 

Before they left Amelia’s, Rhett had asked Link these same questions. They didn’t have the same fingernail indentations in them that they do this time. Link can feel them on his ribs, in the muscle of his heart, fleshy and real, digging in and dragging through sinew. He’s worn thin, his lungs burning from running as far away from the only sense of comfort they’ve had since all of this started. 

And Rhett yelling at him, matching the screaming like he’s been the one behind it all along-- it digs into Link’s skin and leaves him feeling slick and wrong. 

All of this is wrong. 

All of this is wrong. 

His eyes slip shut, and Link feels his stomach churn as he says, “Don’t scream at me.” His voice is low and his hands are shaking. 

He feels another shove to his shoulder. This time, he rears up, fist in the air, before he’s being grabbed and pulled forward, Rhett’s mouth mashing against his own, tasting like fear and adrenaline and dirt. And he’s kissing back, arms going around Rhett’s solid chest, fingers grasping around his own wrist like this is the only way he won’t float away. 

It’s desperate, the harsh pant of breath into his mouth as Rhett kisses him with everything. He can’t find purchase on anything, on Rhett or the earth below him. Everything keeps slipping through his fingers, and his hands fall from where they’re wrapped around Rhett. 

His shoulders drop and he breaks the kiss, his head falling to Rhett’s shoulder, eyes squeezing shut against the tears threatening to spill. Rhett’s hands cup his face, and his skin feels good against Link’s own. He hears the low sound of Rhett’s voice saying, “It’s okay. It’s alright. We’re alright.” It echoes through him, rattles around inside the hollows of his chest. 

And when Link pushes away from Rhett, presses up, and slots their mouths together again, it’s slower this time. Rhett’s mouth opens against his own, allows him to slip his tongue inside, to lick along his palate and lose himself in the feeling of something finally seeming right after all. 

They’ve been running for God only knows how long. They’ve been covered in dirt and eating bugs and watching the world crumble to pieces around them. The moss has eaten every living thing they’ve come across, the plants twisting themselves around every surface in a threat that writhes and dances around them. Nothing has felt real or safe.

But this does. 

Rhett does, and Link’s hands grip his sides to make sure he doesn’t go anywhere. He doesn’t mean to dig in, but he does, and he feels the sound Rhett lets out more than he hears it. 

Link doesn’t exactly realize that he moves them, spins Rhett until he’s backed against that same damp tree Link was leaning against. There’s another sound, soft and sweet, and Link swallows it down before it sinks in. He slips his hands down until his fingers are brushing between Rhett’s skin and the waistband of his pants. 

Against Link’s mouth, Rhett asks him, “You gonna touch me?” 

His hips press up to meet Link’s, to give him permission, and Link pulls away. As he nods his head, he says, “You want me to?” 

“Yeah.” 

Rhett doesn’t ask before his hands find their way to Link’s zipper, and Link doesn’t need him to. He feels a lump form in his throat, fights it down, distracts himself by diving back in for another kiss. 

Getting two pairs of pants down and briefs slipped down mid-thigh doesn’t take very long, their knuckles knocking, their sweaty foreheads pressed together so they can both watch. And the moment Rhett’s hand wraps around Link’s cock, he feels like there’s another shift in the tectonic plates. 

It’s another world ending, a dizzying, terrifying moment, and Link arches in for more. He whines in the back of his throat, searches for everything Rhett’s got to give him, gets his own hand around Rhett, feels the weight of him in his palm. 

There’s a moment where he rocks his hips into Rhett’s fist desperately, and Rhett laughs, low and smooth, and everything melts into this moment. He doesn’t care about anything but this right now. All he hears is their harsh breaths, the pounding of his pulse, and the scratch of Rhett’s clothes against the trunk of the tree.

After a beat, Rhett’s voice drowns all of that out as he says, “Gosh, Link.” 

It’s a pinpoint, tunnel vision for just this, for this one singular moment as Link presses up for another kiss, jerks Rhett off just as fast as his breath threads out of his lungs. He steps forward, crowds in as close as he can, licks the high sounds Rhett makes right out of his mouth. 

Nothing else matters. Nothing in the world matters except for this. 

Nothing left in the world matters except for this. Not Amelia or that house or the moss or the plants or the magic. 

None of it-- just Rhett, the staccato of his hips into Link’s fist, the way he tastes like Before and feels like forever. Link, in a breathless, insane second, thinks that if he keeps kissing Rhett, if he steps a little closer, maybe he’ll wake up and they’ll be back in Buies Creek, having a sleepover and laughing until they’re breathless. 

Rhett comes first, with a gasp and a whine, his hips still moving, his hand around Link slowing. One of his hands comes up, cups Link’s jaw, holds him close while he comes down. His lips are moving, but Link doesn’t hear what he’s saying, can only feel them on his own cheek. 

Link says, “I love you.” 

Rhett says, “Shit. Fuck, Link.” 

“Keep-- gracious, I’m close.” 

Rhett’s hand leaves his cock, and Link watches in a blur as he spits in his palm, grins, and wraps it back around Link’s cock. It’s slick and gross and absolutely perfect. His grip is tight, his chest still moving frantically, and he murmurs, “Come on, baby.” 

Gosh, the feeling of spit, of Rhett’s hand around his cock, it has Link squeezing his eyes shut, choking on a sob. 

And when he comes, he buries his face in Rhett’s neck, muffles his groan into the sweaty skin he finds there. 

They’re a mess, both of them, covered in come and sweat and trembling together against a tree.

He feels like he’s shaking apart again, but this time, Rhett’s hands are there to hold him in place as he does. The remnants of their argument are still buzzing through his veins, and he can’t shake the feeling that things are different, now. This time, when they start running, it won’t be like it was before they met Amelia. 

It was a month. Link counted the sunsets as they sat before them, practicing magic, smashing plants and begging for them to do something at all. One month, and he’s new. He’s different. 

With a deep breath, he lifts his head from where it’s still pressed into Rhett’s skin, and he offers Rhett a shaky smile, passes one shaky hand through his hair as he catches his breath. 

When he looks up, the sky is starting to change, and Link thinks that maybe they’ll be changing with it this time. 


	5. Chapter 5

There used to be shadows, right after everything quieted down. 

Because, see, the apocalypse didn’t just destroy everything around them in one fell swoop. It was slow and painful. They got to watch everything-- buildings, society,  _ people _ \-- die. They got to watch the plants grow. 

But right before the plants, there were the shadows. It was the first real taste of things being off that they got. They were just flickers, something out of the corner of their eyes that Link waited to talk about for weeks, until they both saw one. 

And then it became a game. They’d walk, and one of them would see one, fill the silence with a mumbled count of however many they’d seen so far that day. They were the shape of human bodies, twitchy and uncoordinated against the backdrop of the end of crumbling, misshapen buildings and twisting, violent vines. 

For a while, Link thought he was going crazy. He thought they were ghosts of his past that his brain was conjuring up the only way it knew how. It was weeks, maybe months, of seeing them everywhere they walked. Until one day, they noticed their counts were getting smaller and smaller. 

Eventually, their count was one, and then none. 

It’s been a long while since they’ve seen one, and if Link is honest, it’s unsettling. It’s another end, another thing to see die out. 

They’ve been determined not to die out, too. 

It’s been weeks since Amelia, since the house, since everything, and their main focus has been scavenging. Their packs are full of items Link never would have looked at twice before: animal bones, plants, hulls of acorns-- and Rhett’s been picking up empty water bottles. It’s a meager collection he’s got going on with just four of them tied together with bits of vine. 

He’s got them dangling off his backpack, and every so often he’ll daydream about building a raft. Link asks him, “Where’re we riding it to?” in between biting at his nails nervously. 

And Rhett will shrug, give him a different answer every time, each one as absurd as the next-- the moon, Tahiti, the end of the world. 

But really, what they do is fill them with water whenever they can find enough while scavenging to do the spell. 

Link’s getting better that them; or, at least, he feels like he might be. Doing them doesn’t make his chest hurt as badly anymore, so that’s got to mean something, right? His hands don’t shake as much, which is definitely a good sign. It still feels wrong. 

He hasn’t heard the screaming in a while. 

Not as loudly, anyway. There are traces of it, a crackling spark in the air right before a hollow feeling in his ribs. It’s all been watered down, much like Before, a distant, hazy memory in just a few weeks. 

It’s incredible how quickly they’ve learned to adapt. 

Last week, they came across a neighborhood, the roads buckled around them and the few houses left standing all engulfed in green. Tangled in moss and vines, leaves dropping around them carefully, falling at their feet as they walked. Neighborhoods are usually a pretty safe bet, a good spot for finding clothes in any standing buildings. 

This week, they’re standing in a foot of water, boots and socks tied to their packs so they have something dry to put on when they get out of this mess. They’ve got their pants rolled up to their mid-calves, and Link has never wished harder for a pair of waders in his life. 

Next week, who knows what it’ll be? Link doesn’t think that far ahead, just in case it doesn’t come. Instead, he focuses on now, on Before, on before this week. He knows Rhett’s thinking ahead, and he lets him. 

He slips, smashing the back of his head into a rock above the surface of the water. 

It’s silly, and it really shouldn’t have even happened, but it does. And he falls pretty hard. There’s blood coming from his head, and the sound of sloshing water all around him before he’s got two big hands coming up under his arms, heaving him up until he’s sitting. Everything spins, and his head swims, and Rhett’s saying, “Come on, man. Again?” 

It’s panic, instead of annoyance, and Rhett presses his hand to the back of Link’s head. When he pulls it away, his palm is smeared with Link’s blood, watery and dripping down between his fingers. It makes Link gag before he can even think, before he can react. “Shit,” Link says through his stomach rolling. “I’m okay. It’s just a cut, right?” 

“Yeah,” Rhett says, puffing out breath. “Yeah, it doesn’t look like much. Your head is gonna bleed pretty bad, though.” 

It takes some maneuvering, and a little bit of standing on wobbly legs, but Link manages to twist, get his pack open, and fish for one of the bandanas he’s got stuffed in there. It’s black, so it’ll look less gross when he bleeds all over it. 

His fingers slip before he even manages to get the two ends in front of his head, and Rhett softly tells him, “Quit it before you make it worse,” as his hands grab the cloth from Link. 

Link keeps a finger tucked underneath so it’s not too tight as Rhett ties it for him, and when it’s secure, he says, “You gonna make sure I don’t bleed out, right?” 

Echoes of their conversation the night they left Amelia dance through his words without meaning to, and he realizes with a start that they never talked about what happened. They never so much as acknowledged it. 

That’s how they’ve always been. Their whole lives can be traced through rugs with piles of dirty little secrets stuffed under them. Intricately woven through thirty years of friendship, it wouldn’t be hard to trace down exactly how each of them feel about the other. It’s just that they’d prefer not to touch that particular aspect of themselves. They’d rather pretend it isn’t there. 

Rhett would rather not talk about Before, and Link doesn’t want to talk about the end. And neither of them want to talk about each other. 

When they were kids, they made a pact, an oath, signed it in blood. It was to do something awesome, something big, something that made a difference. 

And standing in the middle of a foot of water, his head bleeding, the world gone all around them, buried under a carpet of moss and a forest of plants-- Link’s pretty sure that oath might still be the most important thing to him. 

He doesn’t have the physical copy of it, but he’s got that little bit of Rhett’s blood in veins, that soaring feeling in his chest that he felt as they signed that paper. They aren’t making a difference, because there’s no difference left to make, but they’re doing something big. 

They’re protecting each other, keeping each other alive, in one way or another. 

For Rhett, he’s physically keeping Link alive, which is what he’s always done-- be it by punching a boy in the face for calling Link names or helping him out of his overturned truck when he wrecked it into a ditch while joyriding. 

For Link, he’s standing by Rhett’s side just like he always has. He went to a college he didn’t want to go to so he could be with Rhett, moved across the country so he could be with Rhett, and now he’s slipping on rocks and busting his head open so he can be with Rhett. 

Until the end, he’ll be with Rhett. He doesn’t much care how hard he’s got to fight to make that happen, and he never really has. 

When all of this started, they were in an apartment they were sharing, standing under a door frame, bracing themselves as the earthquake just kept going. Pictures rattled off the walls, glass shattering all around them as Rhett’s steady, focused look at the ground finally wavered. 

“I don’t think this is gonna stop, Link,” he’d said. Ten minutes in, the radio shouting a mixture of static and frantic updates of body counts, Link agreed. 

It did stop, eventually. It seemed like everything else stopped with it. Outside, it was a shit show, riots of people trying to pull bodies out of the rubble, trying to find their loved ones. It smelled like smoke and chaos, and Link doesn’t think he’ll ever get that smell out of his nose. 

It took three days for the military to get involved, and for the government to open a safe zone like they’d done in the south for the floods and the midwest for the tornados. They got off pretty easy, in comparison to some. Their apartment stood for six days. 

Link, feeling his head throb, says, “You remember when we finally left that apartment, what we grabbed?” 

It’s silly now, but it had felt right at the time. 

He can tell Rhett doesn’t want to answer, but after a beat, he gets a soft snort and a, “Yeah. I really thought I’d need that pocketknife.” 

“Only for it to be nabbed at that camp,” Link grins. He remembers watching the muscles of the guy who grabbed it during Rhett’s frisk, remembers thinking that if Rhett so much as flinched, he’d be a dead man. The first camp-- the government one, with military crawling through every crack-- was brutal. It was the first taste of what was happening that they really got. And really, he thinks he can trace the screaming back to there. That high-pitched, ringing in his ears has been following them since then. 

At first, they didn’t want to leave. They spent two days on the couch, watching the news coverage show bodies in the streets, hospitals lined with people, children running through the rubble of their homes. Faces and faces and faces, flashing across the screens, identifying the bodies. Then, the electricity went out, never to turn on again. 

And, on the sixth day, the second earthquake forced them out. This one was worse. They ran, left nearly everything except for two backpacks full of food and water, Rhett’s pocketknife, and a change of clothes for each of them. His bones have been rattling to the same magnitude as that earthquake since they started running. The asphalt under his shoes always reminds him of standing in that line, of an entire day waiting to be let through those gates, into the only stable area for a hundred miles. 

When tragedy strikes and the government has to get involved, there’s always a frantic sheen of  _ wrong  _ to it all, like being at school during a thunderstorm. It’s too organized and rigid for it to feel real, the air too full of static electricity for things to be so well-laced. 

They slept on cots for all of two nights before people started dying all around them. 

At the time, they didn’t know what was happening. There was no moss then to eat the remains, and instead they sat to rot in the starchy cotton of the cots they were allowed to sleep in, the California heat turning things ugly far too quickly for either of them to handle well. People were just  _ dying _ . Dropping like flies. The rumor was that their eyes would roll back and they’d foam at the mouth, twitching like they were being electrocuted. 

So, they left. 

It wasn’t easy, but they left, signed a few forms that Link’s sure are scattered somewhere along that road, and were ushered out through a different tent than the one they came through. 

Their backpacks were lighter, the food and water gone to the rations of the camp. But somehow, Link felt infinitely better knowing he wouldn’t have to see anybody die. 

On foot, things are harder, and at the beginning, there were still cars and people to worry about. Roads weren’t closed-- they were packed bumper-to-bumper with people trying to leave, to run away from whatever was eating the world alive. 

They started seeing the moss a day before they found the second camp, the one without military. It wasn’t anything like the moss is now, but it was there, creeping its way down the trunks of trees, a vibrant, sickly green that left death and rot everywhere it went. 

The group of tents was right in the middle of the woods, some small park, and the trees were all green at the bottoms. This time, there was no frisking involved, no searching, no stealing of anything, and something about it settled in the base of Link’s stomach, left him feeling sour and thick. But he’d accepted their hospitality gratefully, ate the small portion of soup they gave him in the lid of a thermos, and slept curled up next to Rhett on the sleeping bag they let them use. 

He doesn’t even remember their names. 

But he does remember how each and every one of them looked with their eyes rolled to the back of their heads, white foam oozing out of their gaping mouths, and moss starting to cover their twitching, thrashing bodies. 

Rhett had woken him, grabbed the sleeping bag as he tossed Link his backpack, and ushered him away from it all. 

They’ve been running since. 

And the shadows, they ran with them, Link supposes. All up until they vanished. It was almost comforting to have something else out there with them, to have something else that experienced what they had, even if they weren’t all that real. Even if they were just flickers of his imagination. 

Knowing they weren’t, that Rhett saw them too, made the sting of them disappearing all that much worse. It was the same kind of sting all of this has left behind. 

A slap across the face. 

The moss hasn’t left, hasn’t stopped its destruction. It’s still on the same warpath, leaving behind a thick carpet of violence that’s draping itself across everything. 

When Link thinks about everything, about how it all happened, he doesn’t think of it as poetry. He doesn’t think of it how Amelia did. And when he thinks of Amelia, he doesn’t think about her as poetry, either. 

Both of them-- Before and Amelia-- they’re both just as grotesque as the other. They’ve both left him feeling empty, like something’s been ripped right out of his body, sharp claws digging into his sinew, searching for a pulse that hasn’t been there for a long time. 

The only difference, he thinks, is that Amelia taught him how to keep going. All Before did was teach him how to run in the opposite direction. Amelia taught him how to face it head on. She showed them how to blend. 

And so they’ll blend. 

Rhett reaches for his hand. When he grabs it, he squeezes, and says, “We should stop, soon.” 

Part of Link aches for him to mean entirely, but he shakes his head of that thought and instead tells him, “We have stuff for water, right?” 

It’s a sentence that shouldn’t make sense, by all accounts of what he’s known to be real and true, but Rhett just nods his head. “Yeah,” he says, letting Link’s hand go, letting it fall back to Link’s side. “We’ve got plenty, man. Maybe we should try finding somewhere to-- I don’t know, settle down or something. Just for a little while.” 

Link looks down at his bare feet under a foot of hazy, muddy water, and looks back up at Rhett with raised eyebrows. “Let’s keep walking until we find somewhere dry, at least.” 

They do, eventually, find somewhere dry. It’s another neighborhood, and there’s one house left standing. It’s got no windows, and vines have crept up under the roof, but it’s got walls that are standing, and that’s what matters. 

Inside, there’s an actual bed. Looters have shelled the rest of the house, taken everything substantially important, but Link finds himself not caring about anything but that bed. He doesn’t care that the mattress is warped, that the whole place smells like mildew and plants-- the important thing is that they get to sleep on something other than dingy sleeping bags. 

He watches Rhett spend twenty minutes laying their socks out, opening up their shoes so that they air dry overnight, going through their packs to inventory all their loot. Link uses that time to untie the bandana around his head, wincing when the blood caked there pulls at his hair sharply. 

Rhett finds him in the bathroom, using a grimy mirror and water from one of their water bottles to clean his face a bit, getting the dried blood from his hair. He catches a glimpse of both of them in the mirror and grimaces. “We look terrible,” he says, and watches Rhett’s mouth turn up into a smile. 

“We really do,” Rhett agrees, laughing. His hands find their way to Link’s waist, and he leans in a little closer to admire the scraggly beard he’s grown over the last however long. “We could both use a shave and a shower, that’s for sure.” 

“Maybe in another life, we’ll get one,” Link says. He tries for a grin, but when he doesn’t quite get there, he goes for a sigh instead, fingers coming up to brush through the damp spot on his hair. The cut isn’t too bad, and it doesn’t hurt anymore. He takes it as a good sign, and pulls away to check for any blood on his fingertips. There isn’t any, thank God. “Did you check out that sweet bed in there?” 

Rhett grins again, and Link looks up just in time to catch it in the mirror. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s gonna be so nice to sleep in a real bed.” 

“Maybe we can stay here for a couple of days,” Link tells him, knowing that the question has been sitting on Rhett’s chest since they walked in here. “Get some rest, clean up a bit. Stay dry for a little while.” 

“Let’s stay here forever,” Rhett tells him. “Let’s stop running.” 

His eyes are serious, the grin gone, and Link thinks that if he turns around, he’ll see a different face looking back at him. But it’s the same face, the same look, and Rhett doesn’t move his hands from Link’s waist. His fingers tighten, and Link opens his mouth to argue, but before he can, Rhett’s swooping down to kiss him. 

It’s gentle, careful, and Link pulls away before it turns questioning. He brushes Rhett’s hands from his waist and pulls him in for a hug instead, burying his face in his neck. “We can’t stay here forever,” he tells Rhett. “But we can stay for a couple of days.” 

When he pulls away, Rhett lets him, and stays in the bathroom as Link finds his way back to the room with the bed. 

His body aches as he lays down on something soft for the first time in a long time. The mattress vocalizes what his body can’t, and he stretches further to hear it creak. His joints pop along with it in a syncopated rhythm until finally, he curls in on his side, making sure to leave enough room for Rhett. 

He doesn’t sleep well. His eyes grow heavy, and he listens to the even breathing of Rhett next to him all night, to the soft snores he lets out, but he doesn’t quite fall asleep himself. 

And through the flickers of moonlight filling the room, he swears he sees a shadow. It’s there for a split second, flashing into sight before it’s gone again, and Link tries not to jerk, to move at all and risk waking Rhett. But he watches the same spot he saw it for a few heavy moments. 

He sees it again, twitching and jumpy and then gone. 

His heart races, and for the first time in a long time, he sees something come back to life around him. 


	6. Chapter 6

Rhett says, “We should have stayed at that house.” 

It’s not an argument, the words leaving his mouth in a bit of a rush, shaped delicately around a sigh that Link has a feeling he doesn’t mean to let out. They’d left the house after two days, when Link started hearing the screaming again. 

When he stopped seeing the shadow. 

It’s been a couple weeks since then, he thinks. It’s harder to keep track of time lately, harder to count the sunsets. In fact, it seems like it’s always dark, now. Or at least, it’s never bright anymore. The sun is there, but dull, hanging low in the sky like it’s drawing them closer. 

Maybe he’s going crazy. He doesn’t know anymore. 

But he knows that Rhett’s wrong. They shouldn’t have stayed. Every time they stop, he feels that same sense of wrongness he felt at Amelia’s. Only when they’re moving, when they’re walking, do things settle down in his chest. His heart stops fluttering and his hands stop feeling like they need to reach out for something. 

Moving is important. Rhett seems to be struggling with that. 

“Nah, man,” Link tells him. “Naw, we need to keep moving, I think.” 

“For how long?” Rhett asks, and there’s the annoyance Link was waiting for. It’s sharp and pointed, and Link knows it’s for him. “Til we die, man?” 

Link shrugs. “I don’t know. Til I quit hearing the screaming every time we stop. Til it feels right.” 

“It’s bullshit,” Rhett mutters, and Link catches him rubbing a hand over his face. 

He can feel his own annoyance creeping into his fists, but he bites it down. They’ve got a job, right now. They need supplies, and they need to start looking for somewhere to settle down for the night. It smells like rain and feels like a temperature drop, so they need somewhere with cover. They don’t have time to argue. 

Still, Link can’t help but lob a quick, “You wanna trade places, listen to the screaming all fucking night while I snore next to you?” 

Rhett shrugs, “It can’t be that bad. Seemed pretty okay with it the night we left Amelia’s.” 

“Don’t,” Link tells him, low and just as sharp as he was. He feels his teeth dig into his bottom lip, his lungs working through heavy breaths. “That had nothing to do with the screaming.” 

Rhett’s shoulders fall as he exhales heavily, a look of defeat falling over his face. “Sorry. That was-- fuck, that was shitty.” 

“‘S fine,” Link tells him, turns back to digging through the bushes for whatever he can find. They need bones, mostly, and it’s harder to find those without touching the moss. He knows he could, dig his fingers in the mess of it and push until he gets to the ground underneath, but he doesn’t want to risk getting caught in it. 

When he looks back at Rhett, he’s pushing at a log with his boot, scraping off layers of rotting wood. It’s got moss all over it, but he knows what Rhett’s thinking: there may be something useful underneath it. There’s gotta be soggy ground under that thing, a breeding grounds for mushrooms or bugs. Either one would be good at this point. Hell, with the thick, green coating hiding it’s secrets, they could find bones there, even. 

Right as he’s turning to offer help, Rhett’s asking, “Hey, wanna come help me move this?” 

“Your back gonna be okay?” Link asks, already bending to get his hands on the log. It crumbles, just a bit, and his nails bite into the soft bark. 

It’s barely a second, and everything crashes down around him. Or, it’s the inverse of that:  _ he’s  _ the one crashing down. His arm burns, and then his leg, and his hand. He sees a flash of bright green, almost impossibly green, moving and writhing. And the sound-- god, it’s hissing of some sort. Loud and full of malice and right by his face. 

Then, he hears Rhett screaming, a new scream to blend in with all the others. His vision is blurry, but he just barely focuses on Rhett stomping at something, his eyes wide as he makes frantic sounds. And, after a beat that rushes into nothingness, he hears, “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, Link, fuck.” 

There are hands around his wrists, and he’s being dragged through moss and plants and mud. The same colors he’s been seeing for God only knows how long now blur past him nauseatingly, so he shuts his eyes and listens to Rhett’s desperate voice cracking around promises of safety. 

His jaw works around a slurred, “‘S okay. Doesn’t hurt that bad.” 

Rhett tells him, “Quit talking. Just-- let me get you somewhere safe and we’ll do the healing spell Amelia taught us.” 

Link tries talking again, but it gets caught in his chest. It aches along with the rest of him, burns and pinches like his arm, his hand, his leg. His body is writhing as Rhett drags him, twitching and trying to get away from the pain. 

Nothing he does helps. And gosh, he’s gonna die this time, isn’t he? 

Fuck, he’s gonna fucking die. 

After all of this, he’s gonna fucking die now, with Rhett dragging his limp, useless body through the mud and moss of the forest. 

His tired tongue finally manages to say, “Just leave me, man. Let me die.” 

But Rhett stays silent, ignoring his hard work at getting those words out, and keeps pulling him through the soft belly of the beast. He trudges through the entrails of the world, two sweaty hands gripped tight around Link’s wrists. 

It’s a blind mission, no destination in mind, but Link knows that Rhett doesn’t care. He’ll figure something out. 

And if he doesn’t, then-- 

He doesn’t get to finish the thought before Rhett’s laughing a bit manically. He stops, for just a second, and when he starts pulling again, it’s so hard and sudden that Link’s shoulders protest. For a second, he’s worried about them popping out of socket, but his body is dragged further without injury. 

He hears, through the pounding in his skull, “There’s a house, Link.” 

“It’s a mirage,” Link says, his muscles harder to work with every passing second. 

He hurts. He hurts everywhere, and there’s blood coming from somewhere, leaving slick patterns painted down his biceps. There are rocks and sticks on the ground that dig into him like barbs. But he lets Rhett drag him. He can’t fight it, not like this. He’ll live in the mirage with Rhett, if only for the next few minutes. 

Rhett’s voice is shaky when he says, “I can’t fucking believe this.” And Link feels the ground change underneath him. It isn’t damp anymore. 

It’s soft and cool through his clothes. He realizes with a start that it’s grass instead of moss. 

The tugging stops, and his arms fall above his head against his will. His eyes are open enough to see Rhett trying to stand him up, make it easier to move him. With a grunt from each of them, it fails, and Rhett says, “Alright, I’m gonna pull you into the house, okay? It might hurt.” 

Link lets out a sound of agreement, wanting this to be over. There’s a steady thrum of pain throughout his whole body, an ache that’s bone-deep and encompassing. It’s worse than when he fell. He can feel his breathing slowing, the points that hurt the worst growing tighter with every passing second. He knows he’s bruised and bloody and broken, right back at square one. 

He’s dying. 

The sand in the hour glass is dropping too fast for him to catch it all. 

Rhett does manage to get him inside, to prop him against something solid and cold. His head spins as he sits, opens his eyes. 

“If you die on me now, man, I’m gonna be so pissed. Okay? So, like. Don’t die.” 

“No promises,” Link says, his throat raw and his jaw clenched. 

There’s a grin from Rhett in return, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, and his shaky hands give him away as he digs in both their packs for supplies. 

“We don’t have any tobacco leaves,” he says, face falling as he empties supplies onto the floor. “Shit.” 

Link’s head lolls to the side as Rhett lines up what they do have, and he furrows his brow as he starts separating them. To one side, he puts a rose, a bushel of sage, and nettle. 

This is important. This is a big decision, and his body makes it for him as everything surges forward inside of him, leaving him jerking violently against the feeling. He groans, and slurs through, “Don’t know that one.” 

“Try, man,” Rhett pleads. “Come on, it’s the best we got right now. Just try, okay?” 

Sighing, Link watches patiently as Rhett piles the ingredients onto a bandana for a spell Amelia just barely taught them, once they learned everything else well enough. Link’s got to be the one to recite this, or else it won’t work the way they need it to. 

So he takes the flat rock Rhett hands him, feels the weight of it in his palm, and tries. 

It takes him a second, longer than usual since his hands are so shaky, but eventually, with the help of Rhett, he’s got everything smashed together. He stumbles over the words in his head, trying his damnedest to remember them, but they come out sort of bitten-off, thick. 

He has a moment where he thinks there’s no way it can work. 

With a start, the room is filled with a sweet smell, and he feels heavy. It tangles up inside of him, gets caught in between the sinew and the muscles, and sinks in. His eyes roll back, just a bit, and everything goes cold with fear before they’re fluttering back in place. With his heart hammering in his chest, Link lets out a grunt, body going lax. 

He feels warm. There’s a tug from somewhere in his guts, like a tether snapping back into place. 

“Link,” Rhett is saying, but he sounds far away. “Link, come on, brother. Don’t do this.” 

He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t know what Rhett’s talking about. 

He takes a deep, shuddering breath, letting his eyes fall shut. Another deep breath, and the sweet smell is on his tongue now, filling him up slowly. Everything tingles, like pins and needles all the way through him. 

“Whoa,” he hears Rhett say. “This is–” 

Something in him twists, and he realizes he feels better. When he cracks an eye open, Rhett is looking at him like he grew two heads. 

“What?” 

“You’re– I mean, you’re you, technically. But,” and Link doesn’t miss the blush. “But like, young you.” 

“How young?” 

“20-ish?” Rhett says, and clears his throat. “College, for sure.” 

“Good. Sleep now, okay?” He feels slow, slurred, like he’s walking through sludge. 

He doesn’t get to wait for an answer before he’s nodding off, still propped up half-heartedly, covered in mud and his own blood. Right before he’s falling asleep, he hears, “Okay, buddy. See you in the morning.” 

\--

When he wakes up, he’s in the same spot, a little hunched and sore, his back shouting at him. Rhett looks uncharacteristically content, and the first thing he says to Link is, “You’ve gotta check out this house, man.” 

So, they check out the house. 

It’s eerie. 

It’s quiet. That shouldn’t be the first thing Link notices, but it is. 

There’s an upstairs, and Rhett doesn’t hesitate to drag him up there, show him that there’s a bed, still standing in the middle of a room that’s missing nearly the entire outside wall. The moonlight drapes itself over every inch of dust and dirt, and Link thinks that it might be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

“This isn’t the best part,” Rhett tells him, his grin illuminating everything the moonlight can’t get to. “Come on.” 

Link is still sore, much like he was when Amelia healed him, but he lets Rhett guide him through the whole house again, scrambling down the stairs like two children trying not to get caught. They end up in the kitchen, and Rhett opens a door like he’s a game show host. 

Inside, there are cans of food lining the walls. Labels have crumbled off of some of them, landing in tatters on the floor, but Link feels his heart skip in his chest. They’ve stumbled upon a treasure trove. It’s an oasis, not a mirage. 

Or maybe it’s both. 

He doesn’t care, honestly. 

It feels surreal, like he’s stepped into an alternate dimension and landed upside-down on the other side. Somehow, in the middle of the end of the world, they’ve found food and shelter that isn’t falling to pieces around them.

He feels as though, in a drastic change of pace, life is starting back up around them. 

It isn’t perfect, with sections of brick walls having broken to bits. But god, does it feel good. 

It feels like home. 

There isn’t any screaming, and Link doesn’t feel that slick wrongness like before. His bones feel like they’ve finally slotted back into place after all this time. 

Grabbing a can off the shelf, he tells Rhett, “I think we get to stop for a while, bo.” 

There’s not as much moonlight flooding this room, but they don’t need it, not with how bright they both are right now. 

They eat at a table, dirty and dusty like everything else, but with chairs and a surface. Digging their fingers into cans of vegetables and fruits, Rhett tells him there’s a river only a ten minute walk away. He found it while looking for supplies, just in case. 

He says, “It’s clear. I saw a fish.” His voice is light, hopeful. There’s an air around them that’s settling in the dust, and it feels calm for the first time in a long time.  

“This is unbelievable,” Link laughs, slapping his hand down on the table in front of him just to feel the sting on his palm. Part of him is worried he’s going to wake up. 

The other part of him doesn’t care even if he does. This feeling of joy, of contentment, that’s wrapping itself around his bones-- it’s so fucking nice. Even if this is a dream, it’s enough. In the middle of the storm, to have a moment of calamity is enough to clear his lungs so he can breathe again. 

For a split second, he gets to forget about what’s going on out there. And gosh, that’s-- that’s something they haven’t gotten in so long. The weight of the world has been crushing down on his spine for months and months and months. 

But now, he gets to daydream about bathing in that river. He gets to plan on sleeping on a bed. He gets to eat green beans from a can at an actual table, sitting in an actual chair. 

This feeling right here is enough. 

And he reaches out for Rhett’s hand, traces the lines on his palm with his index finger, and revels in enough. 

After a beat, he says, “Think we can find some scissors to get rid of your caveman look?” 

Grinning, Rhett scratches through the bottom of his beard, fingers twirling the very end into a point. He shrugs, says, “I haven’t been to the bathroom up there yet. Bet there’s probably something we could use.” 

Link slurps the syrup from the can of mandarin oranges down noisily just because he can, and stands, saying, “Let’s go see.” 

The upstairs of the house is almost an entirely different house altogether. He can imagine that it was beautiful Before. It’s beautiful now, but in that way that only destruction can cause. There’s dust and bricks everywhere, holes in the walls, floorboards buckled under their feet. 

There are two bedrooms up here, but only one is furnished. The other is full of boxes, old and dusty, and Rhett says, “There’s definitely animal bones in there.” 

The bathroom, which is sandwiched between the two bedrooms, is nearly intact. The mirror is busted and the bathtub is cracked down the middle. There are tiles missing from the floor. But there are shampoo bottles, bars of soap, razors, and a set of curlers. 

Link wipes his hand over the dusty lavatory, feeling the cool porcelain of the sink under his fingers. The drawer sticks a bit when he tugs on it, but with a click, it comes open. Next to a toothbrush, a dead cockroach, and a comb, is a pair of scissors. 

They’re small and a bit rusty, but they’ll do the trick. 

The house itself sort of feels like a dead person’s house with that hollow, empty, gut-wrenching feeling that permeates throughout. And the bathroom has that antique smell to it, like it’s been empty forever, like somebody came and planted all of this stuff here to make it seem like there were people here, once. 

But it doesn’t feel  _ wrong _ , even then. 

“Sit on the edge of the tub,” he says, turning and clicking the scissors at Rhett. “Let me clean you up.” 

Rhett gives him a wary look that says to be careful, but obliges with a wince as he bends to get himself situated. 

Hair is the easy part, snipping it shorter on the sides and leaving it longer on top like he used to wear it. Link loses himself in the movements, in the sounds of hair snipping off, in the steady calmness of it all. It doesn’t take long, and by the end of it, Rhett looks a little more like the boy Link used to know before the end of the world. 

“Want me to do the beard, too?” he asks, brushing hair off Rhett’s shoulders, watching it fall into the bathtub below. When Rhett nods, he says, “Good, it looks like shit.” 

“That’s not to say it won’t when you’re done with it, too,” Rhett shoots back, throwing Link a smile as he swings his legs over to face him. 

Without even thinking about it, Link slots himself between Rhett’s knees and gets a hand under his chin to tilt his head up. 

It’s comfortable and easy, even when Rhett gets his hands on Link’s thighs, just holding him close as he works. 

His beard is thicker, harder to shape, but he manages. He makes a decision and cuts it shorter than Rhett would want, he knows, but he’s indulging. He’s giving himself something. 

And almost too soon, he’s done. With a new face staring back at him, he turns to put the scissors down on the counter and then reaches out to dance his fingers along cheeks he hasn’t seen in forever. He traces the curve of Rhett’s jaw, drags his thumbs across his brow, tangles his fingers in the shorter hair on the side of his head, and then pulls him in for a kiss. 

It’s too easy to fall into this, to step a little closer and kiss a little deeper, to lick past the seam of Rhett’s lips. He curls his tongue to lick behind his teeth, to force that breathy sound out of him and swallow it whole. The walls aren’t standing well enough to hold anything inside this house, and Link is determined to make sure nothing between them escapes. 

The thorns in his bones have started falling out and his splinters plucked free, and he’s not blooming quite yet.

But he thinks he could, right here. 

Rhett tastes like oranges and when he groans, he feels like an earthquake. 

Link pulls away just long enough to say, “We could do this on that bed, you know.” 

But then he’s swooping back in for more, listening to the wet sounds of their mouths meeting, and making no attempt whatsoever at moving. Rhett’s hands are careful, but they slide up the backs of Link’s thighs, coming to the curve of his ass and holding there while Link manhandles him so he can angle the kiss how he wants it. 

The same fuzzy desperation from last time is dangling between them, but it’s different this time. It isn’t adrenaline fueling this. It’s not Rhett backing Link against a tree or Link easing his hand into Rhett’s pants. 

This is slow, deep, and Link  _ feels  _ so much more this time. The face in his hands is the one of his best friend, that tall, lanky boy he met in first grade-- it’s not some stranger he’s been trudging through a thicket of vines and moss with for nearly a year. 

It’s Rhett who pulls away this time, leans forward to rest his forehead against Link’s torso. He sighs heavily, tugging him close, and Link wraps his arms around him instinctively. And they stay like that for a while, taking comfort in the closeness, taking comfort in all of this all at once. 

Eventually, Link guides them out of the bathroom, down the hall, and into the bed. For tonight, they sleep in their clothes, curled a little too close into one another as the cool night eases through the missing wall. 

Between moonlight and Rhett, Link heals. 

Tomorrow, he’ll be a new man. 


	7. Chapter 7

Settling down makes him uneasy. Something about the floorboards, but he can’t quite place it. He’d thought that after a couple of hazy weeks, he’d adjust, but he just hasn’t. 

His feet don’t feel as steady on hardwood as they do outside, crunching through leaves, stomping through moss. He feels like he could topple over at any moment, clumsy and relearning how to use his legs. 

But his lungs-- gosh, they don’t ache anymore, and his ears aren’t ringing with screams, and his hips and his back feel better than they have in years. When he catches glimpses of himself in the water of the river, he realizes why with a start. 

The face staring back at him is his own, of course, but it’s an old memory of himself that he’s seeing. It’s almost as if he’s looking at pictures, as if they just took too long to develop. This boy he’s seeing is somebody he’d forgotten even existed. It’s been years since he’s looked like this, felt like this. The lines of his body are different, not quite fallen into place yet. He’s lanky and awkward, all of his clothes ill-fitting now. 

He catches Rhett staring more and more these days. 

Every time he does, he feels the ground fall out from underneath him. 

It’s a game. And he wants to win, this time. 

At first, he’d convinced himself it was just the novelty of it all. He was sure that Rhett was watching because he was having the same revelations that Link was, that he was experiencing that bone-deep deja vu that Link couldn’t seem to shake. But it was happening too often for that to be the case. It was too conveniently whenever Link was shirtless, wringing his wet clothes out, or stretching in the sun. 

At first, he’d tried to convince himself not to get too wrapped up in it. That didn’t last very long. 

Something in him is different now, not just his body, and he’s on edge, catching himself staring at Rhett just as much. Cat and mouse, but who’ll get caught first?

The difference is that Link’s staring at the same person he’s  _ been  _ staring at. The difference is that he sneaks out to the river before Rhett even wakes up in the morning, and he wraps his hand around himself just to make it through the day. Maybe Rhett does the same thing while Link is gone. 

He doesn’t let himself think about it too hard. If he stays away from that thinking, he can preserve this pseudo-innocence they have going on. The plan is foolproof, and he’s been doing a good job at keeping it up. 

But today. 

Gosh, today Rhett’s shirtless, wiping sweat from his brow as the sun beats down around both of them, using a shovel to dig holes to plant seeds in. It might be his survival instincts kicking in, finding the act of moving forward attractive, those animalistic impulses his ancestors are to blame for leaving him breathless-- but nevertheless, he’s been staring for way too long not to get caught. 

Link watches Rhett’s back muscles dance, watches his biceps twitch, tries his hardest not to land on his face in fear of being caught. If he doesn’t make eye-contact, Rhett can’t prove anything. Innocent until proven guilty. 

But gosh, the damn jut of Rhett’s hips. Link’s never wanted to get his mouth on something more. 

Maybe it’s because they’re the last two people on earth or maybe it’s some pseudo version of Stockholm Syndrome-- he doesn’t really care at this point. The world is ending, shedding its skin, so why shouldn’t they? Rise from the ashes with raw, exposed nerves. 

The problem is he values their friendship, their relationship of thirty  _ fucking  _ years, too much to let whatever this is ruin it. So, he watches and he lets Rhett watch, too. 

At this point, they’re dragging out the inevitable, probably. 

Link tears his eyes away from counting Rhett’s freckles long enough to get back to pulling the bones from the small fish he managed to catch in the river today. He’s got watery blood spilling down his fingers and he blames that for how lightheaded he gets. 

As if he grew offended at not feeling an audience anymore, Rhett cuts through the silence with, “You think it’s safe to eat that?” 

Link looks up again, shrugs his shoulders, and squints over at Rhett. “Why wouldn’t it be?” 

“I mean, we haven’t really tried consuming anything from any water source.” He puts the shovel down, twists the kinks out of his back, and starts making his way over. Link knows what he’s doing, and the flare of heat in his stomach matches the one on his cheeks. 

Grinning, Link tells him, “If you think I haven’t been drinking fistfuls of that stuff every time I wash up, then you’re wrong, brother.” 

Through a chuckle, “I guess it won’t kill us then, right?” He’s leaning over, stretching out his back. 

And something happens, a shift, a pull-- something. But Link is leaning up before he can think about it, getting his hand around the back of Rhett’s neck, tangling his fingers in the hair there so he can tug Rhett down, mash their mouths together almost painfully. 

Rhett makes a sound in the back of his throat, but returns the kiss enthusiastically nonetheless. It’s desperate and pitiful, and Link doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. His whole body aches, a want so thick he can feel it turn to sludge in his veins. And Rhett tastes like sweat, like earth, like an amalgamation of all the good things left alive on the planet.

They’re the only things left alive on the planet. 

Them and the plants.

More than anything else, Link just wants to know if Rhett’s heart is beating the same way his is. 

When he gets a palm up, cupped over where he knows it’s fluttering, he realizes it is. They’re intertwined, eroding grooves into the other other’s body until they fit flush. 

Link remembers laying on the banks of the Cape Fear River when they were kids. He always felt like he was a little hollow there, but in a good way. It was as though all the shit gunking him up left when they went there. The rushing of the water, the fresh air, watching Rhett swat at mosquitos that never seemed to bother Link-- it cleansed him, purified him in ways that nothing else in his life ever has.

And right now, drumming his fingers against Rhett’s skin in time to his heartbeat, he feels the same as he used to on their walks along the Cape Fear River. He feels all the breath in his lungs pour out of him and he loses the rhythm for all of a beat before Rhett’s pushing him back, pulling away so he can lower himself down onto the ground next to Link. 

A shaky hand wipes over Link’s mouth, and he tastes fish, reminding him of what he was doing. 

Clearing his throat, Rhett grins, tells him, “You obliterated that thing, man.” 

“Yeah,” Link says. He feels silly. Sheepish. He can feel Rhett’s eyes on him as he uses his finger to scoop out more tiny, sharp bones. “It’s gonna taste good, though.” And he turns to smile brightly at Rhett. 

They’ve been out here all day, reveling in the quiet, in the still. Things are different. Something shifted, changed, and he’s right there with it, changing just the same. Whatever bit him, drug him to that edge where everything was blurry and fading too fast, it resettled his bones. Where they were snapped in half, dangling off of him by bits of ligament and tendons, they’re mended, back in place. 

His ribs don’t feel so tight anymore. 

And days like today, he gets a chance to live in that calm. 

He thinks it’s rubbing off on Rhett. They bounce off of each other, fall in step with how the other is feeling because there’s no other emotions left to feed off of. If Link is smiling, Rhett is smiling. When there’s panic, it’s an epidemic, and if one of them starts feeling ornery, they spend the whole day bitching at each other. 

There are nights where they’ll lie in bed, the tension draped over both of them like a blanket, and they wait until one of them finally apologizes. 

Tonight, as Link watches the sun begin to set, he knows it’s not an apology the tension will be waiting on. 

Rhett pulls him out of his thoughts, reaches across him to grab the fish from where Link’s been poking at it mindlessly. He’s snorting, saying, “Look, brother, I think this fish is about as de-boned as we can possibly get it.” Link watches him cradle the whole fish in his hand as he stands. 

There’s barely enough meat for both of them, but there are cans of vegetables and fruits lining the pantry walls that they’ll fill up on. Link wipes his hands on his pants as he stands, scrambling to grab the bandana from his back pocket to rub at the residual dirt. He leaves behind a watery puddle of fish blood in the dirt to worry about later. There are other things to focus on right now.

When they make it inside, Rhett gets to work on gathering the deep pot they’d found in the cabinets, and putting together a makeshift grill using a pan and some wood. He’s got his shirt on again. 

Link busies himself with cleaning his hands, putting the bones from the fish that are big enough to be useful with the rest of the spell supplies. 

It’s almost too easy to fall in step around Rhett, once he’s done. There are cans to open and a fish to watch cook, and between the two of them, they almost wordlessly manage to make an entire meal for the two of them. They eat out of cans, not wanting to dirty plates, and directly off the pan the fish was cooked in, letting the silence linger comfortably around them as they do. 

Eventually, Rhett cuts through it with a gentle, “Thank you for cleaning the fish, bo.” 

Link nods, not wanting to talk, to break this trance, this comfort that’s settled around them. There’s a lump in his throat that he swallows down with another forkful of carrots. 

Outside, the sun is going down, and he watches the colors morph around each other for just a moment before he finally says, “Thanks for not letting me die.” 

The words have been sitting heavily in his stomach for a few days. They’ve been tasting like bile, like acid, like fire, but now-- 

Gosh, now they taste like honey, dripping off his tongue and leaving a stickiness on his skin that he hopes lingers for a while. It’s good to feel weighted, to feel like he’s not going to float away after all this time of wondering if he should stuff his pockets with stones just in case. 

Rhett looks at him. Serious eyes dance across Link’s face, seeming to take it all in. After a beat, he nods, says. “Thanks for not dying.” 

It’s not the words he wants to say, but Link knows that he’s trying. It’s okay; Link doesn’t want to have that conversation yet, either. They’ll get there. 

For now, Link stands, gathers their dishes, and puts them in the sink to take with him to the river in the morning. He feels Rhett’s eyes on him the whole time. 

And it’s okay. Rhett can stare. He doesn’t mind a single bit. 

“Hey,” he says, back still turned from Rhett, grinning when he notices the startled sound Rhett makes at being caught. “Want me to rub your back tonight?” 

There’s a hum, and then a, “Sure. Yeah, that would be nice.” 

“It’s gotta be killing you, man.” 

“It is,” Rhett agrees, and when Link spins around from where he’s been fiddling with putting the dishes in the sink, he’s standing, stretching. “We got anymore of that eucalyptus oil?” 

“A little bit, I think.” They’d made it a while ago, only a few days after they’d found the house, just to use up the leaves before they dried. It isn’t great, considering they’d had to use a shambled together fire, but it’ll help. “I’ll find it and meet you upstairs, if you want.” 

Rhett nods, scrubbing a hand over his tired face. 

Link watches him turn and leave, rolling his shoulders as he goes. 

The little medicine bottle he’s looking for is tucked in his bag propped against the wall by the front door. Two overstuffed survival bags, tucked together by the front door in case of an emergency; and it’s Rhett’s mark, his signature, a sure sign that he’s the one inhabiting this house. It’s important to him that they can leave quickly if they need to. 

Back at Amelia’s, he’d done the same thing, and Link’s pretty sure it’s how they managed to survive. Even with the house crumbling around them, the moss finally taking over, they’d been able to dart out. 

He finds the oil in one of the side pockets, next to an empty water bottle. 

Ambitious, and maybe a bit lewd on his part, Link swings by the kitchen again, finds a small container of coconut oil in the pantry, and turns to find Rhett. 

On his way up the stairs, he traces his fingers along the walls. He swears there’s a pulse to this house. Or maybe it’s his own that he feels, echoing around the place. Maybe it’s both of their pulses, wrapping themselves delicately around the wood, burrowing inside the plaster to ensure they never really leave here. Link doesn’t think he wants to leave. 

Especially not once he makes it to the bedroom. 

The shifting colors of the sky visible through the fallen wall, and in the middle of them all is Rhett. 

Placing both of his containers on the bedside table, he watches Rhett pull his shirt over his head, watches the defined muscles move, traces the scars with his eyes, catalogs the ones that matched some on his own body, before their reversal spell cleaned his slate. They each got littered with them over time, little white and red validations of their struggle. Rhett’s got one that runs from his shoulder blade to his side, curved and vicious, from sliding down the side of an embankment in the very beginning. He’d landed hard, and Link remembers the smell of blood making his stomach turn, fighting back tears so he could patch Rhett up with shaking hands.

Now, his hands don’t shake. They’re steady and strong while he opens the stolen medicine container of homemade oil, rubs it into his palms. They don’t shake while he watches Rhett get comfortable, face-down onto his side of the bed. He straddles him, knees on either side of Rhett’s wide hips, sitting on the meaty part of his ass.

The first touch of Link’s palms to Rhett’s skin has him groaning, and it makes Link wonder how badly Rhett’s been hurting, how much he’s kept quiet, how hard he must be working not to worry Link. He wishes he wouldn’t do that, but he understands why he does. It’s the same reason Link doesn’t tell him when his shoulder hurts, or when his anxiety spikes and he can’t keep still. There’s no need for both of them to suffer. 

The problem is that they know each other too well for that to be effective. Rhett still catches on to when his chest gets tight, still nudges him with an elbow and beckons for him to sit down, take deep breaths and find his footing again. Just like Link knows he’s hurting right now.

“God, that feels—“ Rhett moans, and it draws Link back to the task at hand. He’s just pressing into the curve of Rhett’s back, the heels of his palms supporting a lot of his weight. “’S real good, Link.”

He slides his hands up, dragging them along the line of Rhett’s spine until he gets to his shoulders. Digging his fingers into the muscles there, Link takes in Rhett’s sharp inhale of breath, feels him shift. In a shuddering rush, Rhett lets out all the air in his lungs, and Link works his thumbs through the tension he feels. 

“Gosh,” Rhett breathes, his whole body rolling with Link’s movements. The skin turning red under his hands, Link rubs down with his palms again, hands coming to rest in the dip of Rhett’s spine. 

It’s easy to fall into a comfortable silence, Rhett’s grunts and groans the only sounds, the smell of eucalyptus comforting and medicinal. He doesn’t think as he works the oil into Rhett’s skin, rolls his fingers against the knots of tension he finds. They trace over scars, earning him a few sounds of disapproval from Rhett. They dance over the ridges of his spine, soft and kind and hoping for a reaction that he doesn’t get.  

There’s a beat where he thinks Rhett’s fallen asleep, where his whole body goes lax and he falls silent, too. But when Link goes to move, Rhett arches his hips up, says, “Come on.” 

Link rocks his own hips down, trails his fingers further, dips into Rhett’s waistband. “This?” 

“Yeah.” 

He wriggles Rhett’s jeans down as best he can, pays no attention to how his hands are shaking all of a sudden. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, and Rhett snorts at him halfway through, earning himself a thump on the back of the thigh, but Link manages to get his jeans down and on the floor. Pulling his own shirt over his head, he uses it to wipe the mess of oil off his hands, and tosses it over his shoulder. 

Rhett hums quietly, eyes still closed. And then he says, “Coulda done that a little sexier, Link.” 

“I thought that was plenty sexy,” Link teases. He hooks his thumbs into the waist of Rhett’s briefs, tugs at them with a, “Lift up for me.” 

These are easier to get off. And once they are, he can’t help but drag his hands even further down, get his palms on the meaty part of Rhett’s ass, listen to him sigh. 

He doesn’t stay like that for long, getting up to take his own pants off. Midway through fumbling with his zipper, Rhett turns to watch, cracking an eye open and asking, “You ever taken a pair of pants off before?” 

“Two, now.” They’re tossed to the side with the others, forgotten for a moment. 

And maybe they’ve been dancing around this for too long, for long enough that it feels natural to crawl back into bed with Rhett, drape himself along the line of him. Chest to back, skin-to-skin, and Link can’t help but sink his teeth into the curve of Rhett’s shoulder. 

He gets a hiss and a shudder, and then Rhett’s hips are bumping up against his own. When Link licks over the hurt, Rhett tells him, “I know you think you’re slick bringing that coconut oil up here and all, but you ain’t.” Link can hear the smirk, can taste sweat on his tongue, can feel Rhett’s whole body shift under his own. 

It’s good. It’s closeness he didn’t know he was craving, intimacy that he didn’t have a chance to slow down and think about until recently. 

It’s thirty years and more bullshit than either of them know where to pile anymore all finally reaching a peak. He’s been looking at this same face for thirty years, and he doesn’t think this feeling is new; he’s only just allowing himself to explore what it means. 

Rhett’s tease is hanging in the air, and Link snorts a bit, trailing his open mouth across shoulder blades that taste like eucalyptus. He says, “I wasn’t trying to be slick.” 

“Just trying to get me slick, then?” 

“Yeah,” Link says through a chuckle. He sits up, reaches across for the oil. 

Rhett is pliant when Link manhandles him, crooks his leg, positions him so that Link can sit on his heels between them.

Getting his fingers slick, melting the clumpy oil between his palms, Link asks, “Okay?” 

“Yeah, man,” Rhett says, his voice gravelly and tired. He sounds good. He looks good. His eyes are still closed, and Link watches how his face twitches just a little whenever he presses the pad of his index finger to Rhett’s hole. “Yeah,” he says again, quiet and focussed, his brow furrowing just a little. 

Link presses inside carefully, uses his other hand to hold him open so he can watch. Rhett arches into the contact, hums in his chest. “You ever done this?” Link asks, curiosity taking his manners. 

He watches Rhett’s mouth turn up in a small grin as he nods. “Couple times. Do two, now.” 

His fingers are wet, nearly dripping with oil, and it’s easy to do as Rhett said, press in with two of his fingers. 

Unlike Rhett, he’s never done this before from either end. It’s new and it’s exciting, and he can’t help how he traces over where Rhett’s hole is stretched around his fingers with his other thumb. He can’t help how he watches, pulls his fingers out to watch the way he opens around him. 

Rhett seems to know what he’s thinking, because he grunts and says, “Bet your cock is gonna look even better, bo.”

And gosh, but the words send heat rolling down his spine in waves, thick and heavy and landing in his stomach, rising out of him in a groan that’s too loud, too desperate. Fingers crooking up, he listens for approval, careful to move in ways that have Rhett sighing, pressing into the feeling. His long body shifts on the bed, and he makes small sounds in his chest that let Link know he’s doing something good for him. 

So he keeps it up, moving his fingers carefully, slow and deep and drawing out more and more of those sounds. Link thinks he could do this forever, probably. It’s good, having Rhett like this-- face down on the mattress, arching into the feeling of Link stretching him open with two of his fingers. 

“‘M gonna fall asleep if you don’t fuck me soon,” Rhett murmurs, his voice gone gruff and low, hips working against the feeling of Link’s fingers fucking into him. 

Link grins, teases, “I am fucking you.” 

There’s laughter dancing in his voice when he tells Link, “With your dick, I mean.” After a beat, when Link curves his fingers up, he breathes out heavily, whines just a bit. And then, “Come on, Link.” 

Moonlight dances along the curves of Rhett’s body, and Link uses his free hand to trace the pattern. Everything feels connected in this moment. For now, there’s no discordant background noise, no jagged edges. It’s only the two of them; the universe around them has quieted, carved out this moment just for them. 

Link leans down and presses his lips between Rhett’s shoulder blades, tastes eucalyptus one more time before slipping his fingers free, using them to slick himself. One more time, he asks, “Okay?” 

Rhett murmurs, “Yeah.” 

It’s easy to wrap his shaking hand around the base of his own cock, to guide his slick head to Rhett’s hole. He hears Rhett’s inhale too loudly, gasps out a thick sound of his own when he slips instead of pressing inside. Everything is so slick, and he feels like his limbs are made of putty. 

He lines himself back up, takes a steadying breath, and presses inside. Slow and careful, just like he was with his fingers, he eases his cock into Rhett, face heating up at his thick encouragement of, “There you go.” 

When he bottoms out, there’s a fluttering in his heartbeat that feels more important than it should. This is important. 

He’s toppling over into something life-changing; but then again, what hasn’t been lately? Every step they take is life-changing. 

This, though-- gosh, this is different than everything else. If he could, Link would dig away every inch of the world around them, leave just the two of them, just this. Nothing else matters, nothing is as good as this. Their lives aren’t changing, they are. 

He’s being rewired, his muscles shifting, his skin refitting itself, his body adjusting to the weight of what they’re doing. Because Rhett, above anything else, is what matters the most to Link. The stars in the sky were written around them. Everything has had to make room for itself in their lives. They’re the only sure thing, the only permanent thing. 

And Rhett trembles under him, groans thickly, pulling Link back to him, back to this. 

“Love you,” Link says, his voice shaky, his breathing too loud. His sweaty palms slip over Rhett’s hips, and he pulls out just enough to have Rhett grunting. “Gosh, Rhett, I fucking love you.” 

Rhett reaches back, finding one of Link’s wrists and wrapping his hand around it, fingers finding his pulse. It’s fluttering in his chest, and he knows he he found Rhett’s, they’d be alive as one. Over the rush of his own pulse in his head, he hears Rhett suck in a sharp breath, let it out with a, “I love you, too, Link.” 

Everything else loses meaning, loses sense and tangibility. 

All he needs is this moment. 

All he needs is Rhett. 

When he comes, it catches him off-guard. His hips stutter forward and he almost apologizes, but his tongue can’t seem to work around the syllables. Instead he settles for laying against Rhett again, resting his sweaty forehead between his shoulder blades. As he catches his breath, he hears, and feels, Rhett’s voice rumble out of him. 

“You feel good inside me, bo,” he’s saying. He clenches around Link, chuckling smugly when Link hisses at the oversensitivity. “Feels real fucking good.” 

“You feel good, too,” Link tells him, his voice coming out thin, breathy. His head is still spinning, his veins feeling like spun sugar. 

Steadying himself, he sits up, wraps his hand around the base of his cock to carefully guide himself out of Rhett. He bites his bottom lip as he watches, as Rhett arches against the feeling, lets out a rush of breath and a soft, “ _ Gosh _ .” 

“Turn over,” Link murmurs, hand patting at Rhett’s hip in encouragement. 

Slowly, demurely, Rhett rolls until he’s on his back, looking up at Link with a lazy grin on his face. His eyes are heavy, his head lolling back. And his cock is hard, laying on his belly. Link leans forward to slot their mouths together as he fits his palm over the curve of Rhett’s cock.

Rhett hums into his mouth, soft and sweet, his hips pressing up into the contact. Link gives in, gives him mercy, gets his hand around him fully and groans when Rhett fucks his hips up into the circle of Link’s fist. The pace he sets is slow, and Link follows, licks into his mouth at the same rhythm. 

Rhett’s hands find Link’s head, fingers carding into Link’s hair and tugging him closer, whining pitifully as his hips rock up a few final times. He comes with a heavy sound, his mouth mashing against Link’s almost painfully. It’s slow and perfect, rolling through both of them in the silence of the night. 

Link kisses him through the aftershocks, keeps his hand spread over his cock, letting him rub up against him every so often. It’s easy to stay like this, draped across each other, mouths still mashed together, searching for secrets or apologies or anything in between-- but only finding everything they already knew was there. 

By the time they pull apart, sticky and exhausted, Rhett’s eyes are shut, but Link knows he’s still awake. They maneuver until they’re no longer on top of each other. Link feels exposed, naked and open to the night air. 

Naked and open to Rhett. 

“What bit me?” 

The question falls out of him before he even knows he’s asking. He hasn’t been thinking about it, not really. Not lately. Still, he reaches out to put an open palm on Rhett’s chest, waits. He feels Rhett inhale heavily. 

“Snake,” Rhett says, simple and blunt. “A big snake. Not one I’ve ever seen before.” 

Link shudders, pulls a face. “Thanks for saving my life.” 

Rhett hums, and pulls Link closer to him. They’ve had this conversation already tonight, but Link’s gotten what he wanted from it now. They've said what he wanted them to, gotten there together. 

And for the second time tonight, Rhett tells him, “Thanks for not dying.” 


	8. Chapter 8

He’s on his back, arms outspread to feel the sun on as much of his skin as possible. His eyes are closed, his hair getting lost in the tall grass. He can feel the systems of his body all working together to keep him alive. 

He wiggles his fingers. 

Behind his eyelids, he sees splashes of color, pinpricks of bright, vibrant fireworks that he swears he feels running through his veins. It’s warm out, the sun hanging a little low in the sky. 

In the distance, back towards the house, he hears the low hum of the screaming. It’s the first time he’s heard it in a while, but he doesn’t let it bother him. Lately, not much bothers him. His chest is filled with yellow daffodils, a garden of life anew. His lungs have been replaced with lilacs. Out here, he blooms in the sun. 

_ Out here _ , he blooms.  

It’s different, now. The sun isn’t where it used to be, hanging lower and lower in the sky, and Link traces the outline of it with his index finger, squinting one eye. There are clouds, dark grey against an impossibly blue sky, framed by trees with vines curling through the branches. Everything is messy, ungroomed, and sometimes he misses when he fit in, when that fear was jackhammering through him and he felt like he should run, run, run. 

Now, he runs fingers over the curvature of a drooping sun, cards the other hand through the too-tall grass. And for a split second, he’s connected to both. He can feel the pulse of the ground below him and the weight of the sky above, and he’s the middleman. They run through him to get to the other, reaching through the sinew, through the meat until they can touch again. 

His weeds are growing from his heart, reaching down to sink into the earth and winding upwards to drag the sun down. One day, they’ll both crash into him. 

Until then, he’ll lay here and bloom. 

Until then, he’ll be the middleman. 

The screaming creates a backdrop, an indelicate touch of fingers dragging down his skin. And when he drags his own fingers down the skin of his torso, feeling the dips and curves of his body, he realizes that the sun has drooped just a bit more. 

Sitting up, he says, “Whoa.” It’s smearing down the sky, a dark, orange smudge across pale blue. Head feeling a little woozy, he stands. 

Rhett, when he finds him, is inside, scrubbing his shoes in the bathtub upstairs. 

“The sun is falling,” Link says, hearing the words reverberate back into his own head. 

Rhett snorts. “Sure, Chicken Little.” 

With a scoff, Link thumps him on the shoulder. “I’m serious, man. Come look.” 

Outside, with Rhett grumbling behind him, Link watches the sky again. For a fleeting second, he’s worried maybe he is going crazy, that maybe he made it up, but. 

But the sky is drooping, still. It’s smudging, the colors running like dye down a shower drain. And behind him, Rhett’s sharp inhale of breath comes before his, “Holy shit.” 

“Yeah,” Link agrees. He can’t take his eyes off of it now, not with how it’s still falling, still moving. This might be the weirdest thing he’s ever seen, and that’s really saying something. “Think this might be it?” 

“Nah,” Rhett insists. “Not yet.” 

There’d be a sort of elegance to it all if this was it, Link thinks. A final bow, so to speak. A quiet rage coming to an end. 

Because the earth is angry. That’s what he chooses to believe, with all of this. The earth just gave up, gave in, after all those years of putting up with everything. He thinks it’s shitty that he and Rhett have to be the ones still digging through the trenches, but he supposes at the end of the day, he’d rather be alive. 

But this, with the sun leaving a trail in the sky as it plummets, it’s a faux sense of grace that Link didn’t expect to see. There’s poetry hidden somewhere in the tragedy of it, he knows there is. 

It’s just that the screaming and the pounding in his chest won’t let him find it just yet. 

A hand on his shoulder tugs at him until he’s giving in, following Rhett back inside. In here, it’s quiet. The screaming fades and he doesn’t feel that static in his bones anymore. Rhett tells him, “We’ll be alright,” as if he can read Link’s mind. 

He wants to go back outside, to lay in the grass, to feel like he belongs here still. They should stay inside until they know what’s going on, though, and he knows that. Rhett isn’t going to voice his concern, but Link knows already. 

Inside, he checks for the packs leaning against the front door, counts the steps as he takes them. Dipping his hands in the sink they have clogged, full of water for brushing teeth and washing faces, he scrubs his wet hands over his face until he feels better. Almost clean, he dries off with the bottom of his shirt, tugging it up and wincing when he feels it stretch. 

“Hey,” Rhett starts, leaning against the doorframe. “We’ll figure it out, and we’ll be okay.” 

“I know that,” Link says, and he turns to face him, nearly feeling like he should square up, make a point, but melting at the last second and choosing instead to groan and bury his face in Rhett’s shoulder. When a hand cups the back of his head, fingers scratching through the hair at the nape of his neck, he groans again. “We’re gonna die one of these days, you know?” 

Rhett makes a sound in the back of his throat. “You’ll be first,” Rhett teases. And when Link pinches him on the side, he chuckles, says, “I know we will.” 

“All of this is going to end. We’re just riding it out.” 

“I know that, Link.” He feels Rhett sigh, feels his muscles tense in a telltale sign that he hates this. But, he concedes, “But that’s always been true. So what makes now any different?” 

“It’s sort of express shipping, now,” Link laughs. 

Rhett’s arms tighten around him, but he rumbles with soft laughter. “Are you suddenly aware of your mortality, Neal?” 

And Link’s not so sure that’s it, entirely. It’s definitely part of it, with how it’s been tested so often, lately. There’s more to it than that, though; there are a billion other reasons why it’s so different, now. 

With the sun melting in the sky, he’s shaken. Something about this feels like an hourglass has been flipped over at last. He feels like time is slipping through the cracks in the earth, like things are finally reaching a culmination. 

Just when it was getting good again. Just when it felt worth it again. 

He doesn’t say any of that to Rhett, choosing instead to shake his head and squeeze his arms around him. With a sigh, he leaves it at, “Nah, I guess not.” 

There’s a caring kiss at the top of his head, and then, “We’ll be okay.” 

“Sure,” he agrees, chancing a look and a shaky grin Rhett’s way. 

He’s unsteady for the rest of the day, anxiety creeping up in his veins and convincing him to sit outside, watch the sky. The colors start to change, eek into different shades, like ink spilling over the sides of the canvas. Keeping an eye on the sun doesn’t keep it from smearing its way across the sky, but it makes it so that he knows the rate at which it’s happening. 

And when he stands, it’s on trembling legs that are unsure as to what, exactly, they’re doing anymore. The ground crunches under his feet, the leaves still there, even now, even with how much everything has been changing lately. He listens to them this time, tries hard not to think about his bones sounding exactly the same. 

Wandering isn’t initially what he set out to do, but eventually, it’s what he finds himself doing. The screaming a low buzz around him, the sun in front of him as he walks, he finds his way into the woods for the first time since they found the house. 

It’s the same as he remembers, the same as it’s been since the beginning of all this, and he winds through the moss-covered trees easily. He’s careful, the fear of hurting himself again looming in the back of his skull as he walks, replacing the screaming with a hum of doubt. 

It’s Rhett’s voice he hears, reminding him to take care of himself, to be careful. 

The reminder that he hadn’t let Rhett know he was leaving before he’d left tugs at him guiltily, just a little. But it fades after a moment, a dull sting under the soles of his feet. 

It’s easy to get lost, and he thinks maybe it was his goal, when he finds himself staring at a forest full of trees, the house somewhere on the outskirts. It’s odd to be surrounded by so much life, so much bright, vibrant green, when there’s so much death buried underneath all of it. 

Maybe getting lost was his goal. It’s easier to keep moving as if he can outrun this just like they’ve been outrunning everything. Gosh, they’ve been so damn lucky, sweeping just under the rug, side-stepping all of it somehow. 

What makes them so fucking special?  Why did they get to make it this far? 

Why do they get to watch the world die? 

This has all been so painful-- all of it, wrenching his heart clean from his chest at the very beginning, leaving him empty, hollow, wrung dry. And gosh, they tried so hard to get out of it. Maybe they tried harder than everyone else, and that’s why. They kept moving.

They tried to make phone calls, the lines constantly too busy for any calls to go through before eventually there was just no one answering anymore. That might have been the hardest thing. 

It was definitely the hardest thing for Rhett, Link knows. It wasn’t the phones, at that point; it was that there was nobody left to pick up. The radio silence was the only obituaries they got, left to mourn and grieve as they fought for their lives, a hazy blur of too much all at once. 

And after, when they were on their own, trekking through the moss, watching where they put their hands, what they picked up from the ground-- that’s when Rhett stopped talking about it. It was when their pulses slowed, their lungs filled with air again, their brains able to rest and slow-- that’s when he clammed up, fought back tears any time Link brought up Before. It was too much to swallow by then, a mouthful too thick, too vicious to get down.  

Link thinks he gets it, with his heart in his stomach and his hands shaking at he squints up at the sky again, traces his fingers over the dark smudge the sun is leaving behind as it sinks. He gets it. 

The hardest part isn’t that the world is ending. 

The hardest part is that they’re  _ watching  _ it end. 

They’ve got to sit back and take it all in, keep going because if they don’t, then what was the point of any of this? They’ve been fighting this whole time, dragging themselves through the trenches, stitching themselves-- and each other-- up, finding their footing over and over, even when their knees wanted to give out from underneath them. It’s been hell. It’s been eating away at him, chipping at his resolve, and all he really wants is for the other shoe to finally drop. He wants to rush through to the finish line, get this over with so that the anxiety stops feeling so at home in his chest. 

And as he stands in the trees, in the middle of the forest, with his hands running over his too-short hair, his body feeling different than it has in years, his lungs sucking in huge, aching, gasping breaths of air, he lets his own screams match the ones echoing around him. 

They meld into one, and for a second, he doesn’t know where the end of the earth begins and he ends. For a second, they’re the same thing. 

For one fucking second, he’s a force to be reckoned with. Like earlier, laying in the grass, one hand in the sky and one pressed flat to the ground, he’s a current again. All of that energy running through him, out of his throat, filling the sky with his own protests, his own goddamn screaming. 

It dies out around him, a menacing response echoing back at him before that dies, too. 

His throat hurts, his lungs feel wrung out, and his head rings with the residuals of his own scream, but his hands shake less, and he stands up a little straighter. 

Chills run through him, slip through each of his vertebrae and rattle through his nerves, settling in the palms of his hands as he lets his eyes fall shut, his head dropping back. 

And he laughs. Wild and frantic, the rush of every emotion he’s felt in the past year since this has been going on comes bubbling out of him in an insane, hysterical laugh. It’s the same sort of ache running through him. It’s that same fuzzy energy settling uncomfortably in his stomach. 

They’re going to die. 

That’s how this ends. 

Filling his lungs until they burn, he opens his eyes on the exhale. There’s a certain peace hidden beneath the shadows of admission. He feels better. 

His legs work on their own accord, trekking deeper into the trees, glancing up at the sky again, his fear still thick and heavy in his guts. It’s easy to keep walking, to feel for just a little while like he’s eventually going to find somewhere where things are better, easier. Instead, he just finds more trees. 

Eventually, they start to thin, and he knows he should turn around, find his way back home, but something catches his eye at the last second. 

There’s a clear patch, no trees or moss or anything, eerie and out of place amidst everything. 

The knots in his stomach twist further and deeper, and for a hiccup of time, he thinks he’s hallucinating. Blinking through the panic, he squeezes his eyes shut again. Opening them, his chest goes cold, and he takes another step forward without thinking about it. 

He almost misses her in his fit.

She’s just standing, with her face upturned to the sky, her hands at her sides. Her hair hangs around her shoulders, and it takes Link a moment to realize her eyes are open, staring unblinkingly. It’s off-putting, unsettling, and it leaves him feeling sticky with sweat as he walks closer. 

Careful, quiet, untrusting, he tries to stay as unthreatening as possible, waiting for her to sense his presence on her own accord. There’s bile rising to his throat, his stomach turning as he gets closer, and he chances another glance up at the sky, one more time just to make sure. 

He reaches out as he gets closer, dropping his hand back down to his side at the last second before he clears his throat and breathes out a disbelieving, “Amelia?” 


	9. Chapter 9

He carries her through the woods, bile rising in the back of his throat. 

He’d felt for a pulse before picking her up, and found one, but she’s not moving. She’s not doing anything, her eyes still open, her body limp where he’s cradling her against his chest, her face pressed to his neck. And she feels so small. 

She feels so damn small, the most fragile thing he’s ever been trusted with in his life, and with every step he takes in this godforsaken screaming forest, he feels a little bit more of her fade. He’s shaking all over, bits of him fading away, too, and maybe they’ll just fade here together.

Under his feet, twigs snap and his shoes skid in the slick mud, in the fucking moss, and he nearly falls at least twice. But he keeps his footing, his lungs pounding to keep up with him, his chest aching more and more with every step.

With burning muscles and tears stinging his eyes, the forest starts to feel like it’s closing in on him. There’s no end, no fresh grass, and for a second, his head reels with the thought that all of this was a mirage. 

For a second, he questions everything. He remembers the house, but it’s all starting to blur, Rhett and food and water and  _ magic _ . 

And Amelia. 

He swears he can feel the her pulse against his whole body, radiating off of her like she’s trying so damn hard to stay alive. So he does the same thing, wipes a trembling hand over his sweaty top lip and times his steps a little better. 

She’s warm, still breathing, heart beating in her chest, but he can’t shake the feeling that he’s carrying a corpse. He makes sure he keeps her away from the moss, keeps her high enough that it won’t start creeping in around them, far enough from the trees that he doesn’t brush against any. She isn’t dead. It won’t start seeking her out. 

He says it like a mantra in his head: 

She isn’t dead. It won’t start seeking her out. 

_ She isn’t dead.  _

_ It won’t start seeking her out. _

“You’re okay,” he says, to both of them, keeping himself steady and trying to console all at once. She hasn’t moved, but maybe if he talks to her, she’ll still be able to hear him. So, he tells her, “We’ve got a house. And food, and some water left, too. Rhett’s there. You’re okay, Amelia.” 

He’s sure to keep his voice low, and he winces when it shakes. But maybe it’ll help her, when she wakes up. She’s going to wake up. 

She isn’t dead. 

She’s going to wake up. 

He feels like he’s carrying a corpse. 

The forest is closing in on him. 

Through the screaming, he hears a bellow. It’s loud and human, and it shapes around the sound of his name, a familiar sound, tapping into every portion of his brain. “Rhett!” he shouts back, doubling his efforts. 

He’s wearing lead boots, his feet seeming to sink further and further into the mushy ground, but when he looks down, he realizes he’s just tired. The muscles in his legs burn, and he tries so hard. 

He tries so hard. 

Another bellow of his name, closer this time, and he chokes on a sob, shouting Rhett’s name one more time. There isn’t an echo, but the weight of it all rattles through him, and he swears he’s going to shatter apart at any moment. 

Shifting Amelia carefully, he switches her to his other shoulder, his bad shoulder, giving the other one a break. And he hears, “Where are you?” loud and near and the tears start to fall this time, because he’s almost out, he fucking did it. 

The sun is gone, having sunk its way below the horizon long ago, leaving behind a thick, dark trail that Link makes a point not to trace with his eyes. He’s afraid that if he looks at it, he’ll feel it on his skin. He’s afraid he’s going to throw off the balance of everything, the way it’s all teetering so delicately. 

He’s afraid he’s going to fuck all of this up after all this time. 

He tries so goddamn hard. 

But things are harder in the dark, things are harder without the sun, and he feels like his bones are going to break through the skin, like he’s wasting away to nothing, like his body is going to give up entirely. He’s itchy, mud and moss sticking to his legs, sweat rolling down the line of him, and Amelia weighing him down. 

Ahead of him, the trees start to thin. The ground changes. 

Ahead of him, the trees start to thin. 

Fresh grass, and he drops to his knees, listens to Rhett’s voice one more time, startled when he hears it so close, hears a shocked, breathy, “What the fuck?”

And then there are hands, grabbing at the weight on his shoulder, pulling her off of him, their skin sticking together at his neck, where her shoulder was pressed against him. When he looks, her eyes are still open. 

Rhett starts checking for a pulse, frantically saying, “Shit. Amelia. Fuck, Link, what happened?  _ Shit _ .” And when he finds a pulse, another, “What the fuck?” And this one is laced with disbelief. 

“She’s alive,” Link says, swallowing around his tears, catching his breath, rubbing a nervous hand over his damp, sticky skin. Rhett’s got his ear by her nose, trying to catch any signs of breath, on his knees next to where he’s got her flat on the ground. 

The grass is cool and smooth and so unlike the forest that Link untangles his legs from under himself and drops down like Amelia, laying flat, waiting for Rhett to check on him, next. 

He doesn’t, gathers Amelia’s limp body in his arms instead, and says, “Come on, let’s get her cleaned up.” 

For a second, Link considers staying. He considers crawling back into the forest, getting lost again, but that fear dips into his heart, hiccups a beat and reminds him of how horrible that just was. So, he stands. 

He follows Rhett into the house. 

“She’s alive,” he says again, reassuring Rhett, reassuring himself. 

She’s going to wake up. 

She isn’t dead. 

Rhett nods. “What happened?”

There isn’t an answer, but Link tries: “I found her in the forest.” 

“You left,” Rhett says, his voice shrinking like Link’s resolve, leaving a smear of discomfort down Link’s throat. 

Link nods, clears his throat. “I’m sorry.” 

“You don’t have to be.” 

He is. 

But he isn’t, really, not about leaving. He’s sorry about a lot of other things, but not about leaving. 

So instead, he says again, “I found her like this, just uh-- Just sort of staring at the sky with her eyes open like that. She hasn’t responded to anything.” 

He can tell Rhett wants to say something, but instead, he shakes his head and tells Link, “Let’s just get her to the house, okay?” 

And the conversation falls short, just like that. Link bites at his bottom lip nervously, tears off bits of skin with his teeth absentmindedly, and follows Rhett back to the house. 

It isn’t a far walk, right in the distance, right in front of him, but his legs burn, his chest aches, and time slips through his fingertips in thick, goopy waves. It feels like it takes hours to get there. It feels like he’s been dragging his feet the whole time. 

He can’t tear his eyes away from Amelia, how her arm hangs limp off the side of her body, her head lolled back. She looks so much like a corpse, so much like all of the corpses he’s seen in this past however fucking long the world has been collapsing around them. It’s a nervousness settling into his bones that they’re going to have to bury her. 

Even with all the death he’s seen, all the corpses, it’ll be the first grave he’s ever had to dig. 

Throat getting tight, he forces himself to stop biting his lip, balls his hands into fists at his sides instead.

She isn’t dead. 

She’s going to wake up. 

By the time they’re stumbling through the front door, inside the house just as quiet, just as still as outside, Link’s lip is between his teeth again. His nerves feel frayed, and when Rhett’s shoulder brushes against him on the way in, it burns through him, sensitive and violent, like dragging nails over a sunburn. 

He watches, with almost an out-of-body feeling, as Rhett lays Amelia’s limp body in their bed, still messy from them. A ratty blanket is shoved aside, and Rhett leans down to press his ear by her nose again, sighing in relief when he pulls away. 

“She’s alive,” Link insists, a little rude this time, probably. He doesn’t care how it comes out. He hates this. 

He hates everything about this. Feels like his heart is going to beat right out of his chest, and maybe if Rhett put his hands on him or something, he’d feel better. So he says, “Just fucking hit me, already.”

“What?” Rhett asks, his eyes narrowing in confusion, and he scrubs a dirty hand over his face. He looks tired, but Link’s trembling apart. 

He says, “Hit me or-- or fucking something. You’re mad, do something about it.” 

“I’m not mad,” Rhett tells him, voice calm, even, and Link rears forward, shoves him. “Come on, man.” And he’s got two hands holding onto his forearms, holding him in place until he makes a sound in the back of his throat, rips out of Rhett’s grip. “Link, quit it.” 

“Fucking hit me!” he cries, sniffling as the tears pool in his eyes. He won’t cry, won’t let himself. He tries shoving Rhett again, gets so far as his hands making contact before he’s being tugged forward, held against Rhett’s chest. 

He’s trembling. 

He hates this. 

“Quit it,” Rhett says again, right in Link’s head. And then, “I’m not mad, Link. I’m not hitting you.” 

“Why?” Link asks, his voice timid around his tears, shaking with the effort not to let them fall. “Why aren’t you mad? I left.” 

“You came back,” Rhett says, sharp and edged and Link  _ gets it _ .  

His wobbly tears finally fall as he takes in a deep, wet breath, and says, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Rhett. I’m sorry.” 

It all rushes out of him, and he’s enveloped in familiar arms, the panic and turmoil all finally bulldozing its way out. He feels like he’s going to collapse in on himself, and it hurts, burns in his chest, in his throat, in his head when he realizes he isn’t breathing. A sob gets caught in his throat, and he lets it sit there, loses his breath, feels his head start to spin, sees black spots dancing in his vision.

When he finally inhales, it’s thick and heavy and loud, and through it, he hears Rhett talking, slow and calming and encouraging him to breathe, to let it out, to take a deep breath. Link feels himself crumbing apart, feels the pain build in his chest from being buried for so long, gets lost in the agony, revels in it. For the first time in months, he feels something other than fear, and it’s sorrow, a screaming, terrible sorrow that’s been nestled so comfortably in his bones all this time. 

God, he’s so sorry. He’s sorry Rhett’s had to go through all of this, that he’s been hurting so bad and that Link has contributed to that pain. He’s so sorry that Amelia is hurting, that she’s going through a life like this. He’s sorry for everything, for all of this, for this cruelty that they’ve been going through all this time. It’s been sitting under his chin, perched neatly from the beginning, and it aches on its way out. 

His whole body is shaking; he can’t control it, and Rhett tries his best to hold him in place. 

His throat gives out around a, “I’m so sorry.” 

Right in his head, Rhett tells him, “It’s not your fault. Nothing is your fault.” 

“I left,” Link sobs. “I left, just like everyone else, Rhett.” 

“You came back,” Rhett insists. “You didn’t leave like everyone else. You didn’t die, Link. You’re right here. You came back.” 

It drags through him, like a pill that goes down the wrong way, and he’s left with a thick, aching feeling all the way down. Rhett’s hands around his wrists burn, but he doesn’t care, he lets Rhett hold him close, tries his best to catch his breath, can feel how heavy and awful his face feels. But his lungs slow, his heart beats normally again. His pulse rushes in his head, loud and powerful, and Rhett’s right. 

He isn’t dead. 

He’s going to be okay. 

“Okay?” Rhett asks, gentle and reassuring, and Link nods, not trusting his voice. 

There’s a layer of mucus in his throat, and he’s still crying, but he can breathe. When Rhett releases his grip on Link’s wrists, Link wipes at his face, trying to clean himself up, calm himself down, but it stays slick with the tears still dripping. He’s still shaking, but he’s okay. 

The tips of his fingers are numb, his wrists sore, but he’s okay. He wants to apologize again, but just thinking about it forms another lump in his throat, so he doesn’t. Instead, he turns to look at Amelia. 

There’s real fear in not knowing what to do, in that helpless feeling of having no idea of how to fix a problem. She hasn’t moved, hasn’t responded to anything. He doesn’t know what to do. 

“Let’s go downstairs, get you some water, okay?” 

Link nods, peeling his eyes away from Amelia as Rhett guides him out of the room. 

The house seems to be hurting with him, a wild, kinetic sort of energy flowing through it as they walk. Link runs his hands along the railings on the stairs, feeling it in the palm of his hands. He wonders if Rhett can feel it too, but instead of asking, he focuses on trying to stop his breaths from hiccuping. 

By the time he’s plopping himself down in a chair in the kitchen, his brain catches on to how exhausted his body is. Physically, he feels like collapsing, but his mind is spinning in a field of daffodils, watching the ground below him morph into something else entirely. On autopilot, he drinks the entire glass of water Rhett hands him, still wet on the sides from being dunked directly into the bowl on the counter. When he hands it back, Rhett asks him, “Do you want another one?” 

“No,” Link says, and his voice doesn’t sound like his own anymore. It’s different. It’s changed, just like the rest of him, rough around the edges, worn and scraped apart. “Thanks.” 

He hates this. 

His panic comes to him in waves, rolling through him carefully, calculated, and he swears he can feel it in the palms of his hands, in the fleshy insides of his lips, where his teeth have ripped the skin to shreds. Rhett reaches out and grabs his wrists, keeps his hands from shaking apart for at least a little bit, and the contact settles him briefly. 

Everything is spinning out of his control, when just a few hours ago, he’d felt so grounded. He’d felt so connected to all of this, as though he was replenished, like maybe he’d finally managed to find how he fit into this mess. That feeling is gone, his lungs feeling hollow, his heart feeling tender. His stomach lurches, and he lets his eyes slip shut so he can swallow down the lump of emotion. 

“She’s not dead,” he says again, as if the words are tethering him here, as if saying them enough times will solidify it. He’s begging, asking the universe for one last favor. 

He doesn’t think the universe is listening anymore. 

“She not dead,” Rhett agrees, nodding his head. “And neither are you. You know that, right? You’re not dead, Link.” 

The tears well in his eyes again, his chest filling with a different emotion, those fears rushing through him at once, and God-- 

God, he hadn’t realized he was looking for that confirmation. He hadn’t realized he was afraid of exactly that all along, but hearing it verbalized, hearing Rhett piece together everything curling a little too tightly inside of him aches like nothing else has. 

“I know,” he says, but it comes out shaky, unconvincing. He tries again, but his throat tightens up at the last second, “I know I’m not dead.” 

Rhett, when he chances a look, is open, warm, kind, and it hits Link like a train. It’s so hard for him to fall apart like this, even worse when he’s being tugged forward again, his head buried in Rhett’s shoulder as his sobs wrack through him. All the knots he’s been tying to keep everything in place come undone at once, unravelling him at the seams. 

But Rhett’s not dead either. Rhett’s right there, as solid and permanent as ever, and Link doesn’t know where to put his emotions anymore, choosing to rear up almost violently, crash their mouths together even though his face is wet. He can taste the salt of his own tears, of Rhett’s sweat, and underneath it all, the sweetness of both of their relief. 

There’s the sour taste of desperation, of fear, of the world crashing to pieces around them, but Link ignores all of them. He just wants to allow himself this, just this, right now. 

He focuses on the feeling of Rhett’s lips against his own, of Rhett’s hands sliding up to his elbows, to manhandle him forward, until Link is straddling him in the chair. It’s frantic and messy, their mouths slipping over each other, but Link doesn’t care. He needs the closeness, needs to feel the solidity of Rhett under his hands, the rush of life that he can’t feel in himself anymore. It stops his head from spinning when Rhett slides his big, warm hands under Link’s shirt. 

Big fingers dig into the muscles of his back, and for a second he wonders if Rhett’s trying to get at his heart, is trying to reach inside and make sure it’s still beating. Against Rhett’s mouth, Link promises, “I’m alive, Rhett.” 

“Yeah,” Rhett says, and Link’s sure that Rhett’s face is wet now, too. “Fuck.” And those fingers dig in even deeper, just as panicked as Link, just as desperate as the air between them feels. 

Link feels like he’s falling, tumbling down just like the sun in the sky. He only hopes he’s smearing color across Rhett’s skin, making his mark, leaving an impact. 

When Rhett licks past his lips, licks across the roof of Link’s mouth, something shifts. Link  _ feels  _ it, tense and crackling around them, wafting in through the open windows, and it sends fear rippling through him. There’s a certain sort of finality to it all, a thick blanket of indifference. 

The ground below them trembles, and Link clings onto Rhett, wraps his arms around him with a startled sound, cradles his head to his chest and curls into him. Outside, there’s the discordant sound of screams, but they’re louder somehow, echoing around in the house, in Link’s whole body, through the hollows of his bones, sending chills down his spine as he holds Rhett close. 

The ground rattles apart, an animalistic roaring seemingly giving life to the air. Link feels paralyzed with fear, feels his skin burn cold, all of his blood seeming to stop in his veins. It feels like the earth is cracking in two, like it’s giving up. They aren’t dead, but maybe the earth is. 

Maybe the earth gave up at last. She’s taking her final bow, and she’s going to pull them down with her. 

Rhett is shaking, too, and somehow that feels more detrimental. His shaking threatens to rip Link apart far more than the earthquake is. The rattling of the house doesn’t scare him nearly as much as the feeling of Rhett’s heart hammering in his chest. He squeezes his eyes shut, leans his cheek on the top of Rhett’s head.

And he holds on for dear life. 

He just barely registers the feeling of Rhett’s hands holding onto him, too, of how he’s talking against Link’s chest. The words blur together, but the low, calm sound of Rhett’s voice steadies him just a bit. A hundred things fall off of shelves, crash to the floor around them, but Link doesn’t care about any of it. Rhett is still solid, is still permanent. 

“Fuck, Rhett,” Link sobs, his fear eating away at his spine, numbing the nerves until he loses feeling in his limbs. “I’m scared.” 

“It’s okay,” he catches, feels Rhett’s arms tighten around him. “It’s alright. We’re gonna be okay. It’s stopping now, yeah?” 

And Link feels it now, after a few solid minutes, that the trembles are smaller, that the air feels less alive, less thick. He relaxes a bit, presses a kiss to the top of Rhett’s head. He breathes, “Yeah. You’re right.” 

Uncurling himself a bit, he runs a shaking hand through his hair and over his damp face, wiping at tears that have mostly dried now. The ground, when he puts his feet on it again, is still rumbling, low and constant, and he’s scared. 

He’s so scared. 

He’s scared they’re going to die. 

He’s scared Rhett’s going to die, but he’ll keep on living. 

He’s scared of all of this, of everything, of dying and of not dying, of the earth giving up on them. 

But for now, he takes a few deep breaths and buries his face in Rhett’s neck again, finding comfort where he’s always found it. 

Everything goes quiet after a beat, desperation still eating its way through him. He needs somewhere for everything to go, feeling it collecting nervously in his fingertips. 

He allows himself a pause, to rest against Rhett, trying to clear his mind. His lungs pull in heavy breaths, filling him up to his very core, everything in his chest settling at least a little, like the calm before the storm. 

Everything goes quiet. 

And then they hear her scream, loud and piercing, and rattling the house with the same ferocity, the same quiet contempt, as the earthquake. 


	10. Chapter 10

He was sitting on the couch, eating a bowl of cereal, when it all happened. They were Mini Wheats, and it was two percent milk. He was wearing an old t-shirt of Rhett’s that had gotten mixed into his things in the wash and a pair of black sweatpants. Barefoot, watching the news like they’d been for days, body counts flashing onto the screen from places so far from them they swore it would never make its way here. 

He’ll remember that moment forever. He’s sure of it. And the moment before, that last moment of peace, of quiet. Of normalcy. 

If not the moment itself, he’ll remember the way his blood ran cold, how he could feel his pulse in every inch of his body, how his joints went still. The TV was too loud, impossibly loud, filling all the empty space in the house, in Link’s body. And Rhett came stumbling out of his bedroom, bare-chested and wide-eyed. He’d been folding his clothes, putting away his clean underwear when it started. 

Link’s cereal bowl got put on the floor below him, one last synopsis in his brain firing in an attempt to help. And they watched the world start crumbling down around them like that, Rhett from one side of the room, and Link on the other. 

(Sometimes when he’s sleeping, he hears the sound of the spoon clattering around in the bowl, will see the milk splashing onto the carpet, onto his bare foot next to it. He’ll feel the splash of cold before jerking awake in a panic.)

It isn’t graceful, and it isn’t like in the movies. The ground below them shook for hours, trembling and rattling and they spent a couple days in the living room, too scared to do anything else, sleeping on the couch in brief moments as they watched the news. They spent a couple days desperately trying to call loved ones, trying to reach out to anyone at all, but finding everything jammed, too many people doing the same thing all at once. It still aches, if he thinks about it. But he doesn’t. 

He remembers just sitting, looking at Rhett as if he had the answers, as if this was something he’d know how to do. They had heard all the reports from other parts of the world for weeks, sure that it was a fluke, that things were just  _ happening _ . The body counts were high, the news getting thinner and thinner as water rose and the earth split itself in half, but it wasn’t here. There were fires that were uncontrollable and seemingly coming from nowhere, thunderstorms that never ended, tornadoes that spanned miles and miles. 

But they were safe, their loved ones were safe. 

It was far away from them, from everyone they knew. 

Until it wasn’t. Until it was under their own feet, rumbling and loud and knocking things off their shelves until there wasn’t anything left to knock down. He could feel the rumbling in his chest, connected to all of this even then. His hands trembled just like the ground below them, rattling him apart. 

The first two days, they watched the news, stayed holed up in their house like they were told. The body count kept rising, kept flashing across the screen like a sick joke, and Link was obsessed. The last number he saw sat heavy in his stomach, rolling and rolling and rolling, a five digit number that he knows only kept growing and growing. They watched buildings they had been in collapse as if they’d never been standing at all. Everything felt numb, surreal, and Link panicked, wanted to look away but survivor’s guilt was already eating him from the inside out, growing stronger with every dusty, bloody body he watched being pulled from underneath rubble. 

The entire west coast was put under a state of emergency, there were curfews and military personnel and camps being set up on stable areas. 

Fires north of them raged as the ground underneath them cracked apart, crumbled into pieces. Link almost expected the entire state of California to slough off into the ocean, to leave a dust trail as it went. 

He was terrified, spent four days trying to call their families, listening to the news on the radio once the power went out, power lines dangling in place as poles snapped, the concrete below them buckling.  Buildings were crumbling around them, and Rhett was the one who started the conversation of leaving. He was scared, he’d said, he wanted to leave, to get somewhere safe before they got trapped under the rubble of their apartment when it decided to fall. Link had convinced him to wait a little while longer, just until they could get in touch with someone, his voice wavering, pleading. He remembers how hard he begged, how he’d cried, clutching that goddamn phone in his hand like it would save them. 

The next morning, the building next to them collapsed as the ground started shaking again, that roaring starting up all around them. It felt like the end. It felt big. It felt final, so Link packed a couple of bags and helped Rhett gather important documents that were eventually used as kindling at some point. 

They left, and Link had never been so terrified of doing something in his life, sweating through his shirt three times over, chest heaving as they got in the Bronco. He remembers weaving through crowds, uncomfortable and nervous, avoiding the looks they were getting, the way people were pounding on the truck. They’d rolled the windows up before they got into the thick of things, not wanting desperate hands reaching in and doing desperate things. 

The crowds went on for miles, people finding solace in any area that wasn’t rumbling, not wanting to take their chances with being in a car, lining the roads as they walked in groups. There was blood everywhere, and Link did his best not to look at anybody. He did his best to keep his head down, listen to Rhett’s low voice talking about the camp they were going to, about how they weren’t going to do like these people and be out in the open. They were finding help, finding a place to stay until this all calmed down. 

They had the radio on low, and Link did his best to focus on that instead, listened to voices so far removed from the situation they may as well be on another planet entirely talk about the people he was watching with his own eyes dragging their dying loved ones along the pavement desperately. 

It was a panic, families doing their best to survive this, to make it out of a tragedy, and the two of them were just barging through the throngs in their own desperate attempts at survival, and Link remembers telling Rhett they needed to get out of the car, fear bubbling up inside of him, guilt eating away at the few fleshy bits he had left in him. He remembers trying to convince Rhett that he was right, that they shouldn’t be in this car when so many people were dying around them, when the roads were this unsafe. And he remembers Rhett saying no, ending the conversation there. 

They drove for hours. They drove so long Link was sure they’d run out of gas, get stuck and get ambushed in these groups of people. There were miles and miles of nothing, of no one, and Link swears he saw flashes of red licking at the trees in the distance. Eventually, there were people again, there were cars, there was traffic. If Link tried, he could convince himself it was just another day of commuting.

They drove until the sun was settling down around them, the skies going dark, the crowds turning into lines turning into tents turning into uniforms pointing guns at them and yelling for them to get out of the car and Link pissed his pants, sweat soaking his shirt through until it was sticking to him, tears and snot streaming down his face. When he turned his head and caught a glimpse of Rhett, hands in the air much like Link’s own, he saw tears streaming down his cheeks, too, but his mouth was in a line and his chest was heaving, and the guns were lowered. But the uniforms were still yelling, orders blurring around him, and Link still doesn’t know how he knew what they were saying. 

They had to hand over their keys, get their belongings out from the back seat, and get in line. Link doesn’t know how long they stood there, the ground still trembling below them, people getting more and more hysteric, military officers walking up and down, keeping everyone in check. They handed out food and water sparsely, children being the first priority. 

Link didn’t pay any attention to the faces of the people standing in line with him. He couldn’t watch this play out anymore, didn’t want to live in this reality any longer. So he focused on the ground below him, on the sky, on anything other than the people. If he would have seen their faces, he would have never stopped seeing their faces. So instead, he became as indifferent as he possibly could, focused on Rhett, focused on the few steps they took before the line settled indefinitely. 

He knew some people died in line, remembers gurneys wheeling corpses away in the blistering heat. Rhett would lean down every time and give him a number. Link stopped listening after it broke a hundred. 

Two days, three nights, they stayed in line. They counted the bodies being wheeled away, they offered their food to the couple with the two small kids in front of them. They talked to each other quietly, tried to shift the focus as best they could. Two days, three nights, and when they reached the front, Rhett was so sunburnt his skin was peeling off his body in sheets, and Link’s hands were shaking so bad he was certain they were going to stay like that forever. 

The front of the line wasn’t any better, he remembers. The front meant paperwork, meant harshness and orders and more yelling, more confusion. More desperation. He could hear screaming from inside the gates, sobbing, yelling, fighting. He didn’t want to go in, but he couldn’t turn away now, not with Rhett grabbing his papers, stuffing them into the backpack that was emptied of its food and water and anything deemed a weapon. They were left with clothes, with IDs and chapstick and their wallets and nothing else. 

He couldn’t cop out, with Rhett charging forward, towards the line of tents, the line of cots, the screams, the sobs. It was a whirlwind, a mess of sitting in the same spot all day as Rhett poured water onto the pillowcase and dabbed at his sunburn. It was the same thing all day, screaming and chaos and watching people file in. It was MREs and bottled water three times a day. It was kids, turning redder and redder and people getting weaker and weaker and Link had to live in it until he couldn’t anymore. He had to live in it until people around them started dying. 

They hadn’t seen the first one, only heard from other people around them that it had happened. 

They saw the other two, the beds across from their own, and the rumors were right-- their eyes rolled back, mouths falling open as the muscles in their bodies gave out, twitching nauseatingly, foaming at the mouth and gurgling as they asphyxiated. They didn’t leave until a few days later, until Link couldn’t take it anymore, more and more bodies just being left in beds to rot, too many people dying for them to get to all of them, the smell getting stronger in the heat. 

It wasn’t easy to be let out. It almost didn’t happen, when Link snapped at the guards at the front, bellowing about not wanting to die like that, not wanting to be left to bloat and rot in the middle of that shithole. They’d been made to sign even more stacks of papers, assuring that they weren’t going to hold the U.S. government responsible should something happen to them once they were outside the camp. They had to jump through hoops, prove they were stable, that they weren’t taking anything that wasn’t there’s with them. 

They almost weren’t allowed out. 

But they’d made it. 

Things stayed hectic, but he remembers that taste in the back of his mouth in that camp, the smell of decomposing bodies in the air, the lines and lines of people. He remembers the group of people they came across after that, how they’d taken them in kindly, shared their food and water and shelter. They were with them for nearly a week. 

And then, in the middle of the night, they’d woken up to all of them foaming at the mouth, asphyxiating on it, twitching with their eyes rolled back in their heads. They’d stumbled over their bodies as they gathered their things and ran, careful not to touch any of the moss creeping up the trees around them, careful not to slip on the slick of it covering the ground.

He remembers the fear, the feeling that this was it, this was the end. Where do they go from there?

This feeling isn’t much different. 

The tips of Link’s fingers are numb, his face still wet, sniffling as his legs work on autopilot, leading him up the stairs. Rhett’s clumsy on the way up, his sweaty palms slipping against the banister, squealing in a way that seizes in Link’s chest painfully. 

She’s still screaming, filling the edges of the house, and Link swears the house is weeping along with him. He can feel it in the air, thick and stifling, heavy on his shoulders as if there wasn’t enough weight there already. His head is spinning and his body is trying to keep up, but his legs are trembling. They’re weak, slipping up the stairs like they’d slipped in the mud of the forest earlier, like he’s slipped on the embankment, like he’d slipped in the water. 

And Rhett’s bellowing again, throat working on Amelia’s name in a deep, booming voice like he’s trying to win. But he doesn’t win this time, that’s not how this works. 

Link watches him stumble into the room, his head echoing the screaming, the sound of Rhett’s voice shouting Amelia’s name. He slips on the last step and catches himself on his hands before he falls. 

From the other room, he hears Rhett call his name, picking it out of the screams, and he scrambles forward. His hands are shaking at his sides when he steps into the room, and he sucks in a sharp, shuddering breath. 

The screaming stops. 

All of it. 

The screaming outside, the screaming inside, Rhett’s screaming. It’s abrupt and it’s violent and it’s overwhelming. He’s unsettled, his bones all shifting out of place again, his ribs feeling too big in his chest. He can’t tell what he hates more, the silence or the screams. 

Amelia is still lying down, her eyes shut this time, but she’s trembling like Link was earlier. He can hear her breathing, how it’s rattling around in her chest, heavy and strange, unreal. She looks the same, but her brow is furrowed and her mouth is dropped open as she pants. 

Rhett stands close to the door, watching. 

Link barrels forward, stumbling over his own feet, sits on the edge of the bed. 

“Amelia.” His voice is desperate, stuttering around itself. It sounds as unreal as Amelia’s breathing, and everything feels too thick, too heavy. It feels like they’re hurtling forward, unable to untwist themselves from the vines wrapping around them, tugging them down. 

She moves her jaw like she’s trying to talk, and her eyes slide open and she’s screaming again. It’s loud and it’s violent and it seeps into his pores, fills him slowly like a glass of water. 

He puts a hand on her arm in reflex, digs his fingers in and she stops, her head turning to look directly at him. It makes him flinch, how sudden it is, how weighted. 

“Link,” she says, and her voice is different. It sounds like she’s still screaming, like it’s been sitting on her chest this whole time. “Rhett. Look around you. What’s left?”

Link opens his mouth to answer, his hands shaking, his heart hammering in his chest, but Amelia keeps talking--

“They don’t always want to help.” 

He’s heard her say all of this before, echoing around in his head like they’ve been there all along.  

“They aren’t happy.” 

For a moment, he waits for it, for the eyes to roll and the mouth to fall open. He waits for the convulsions. He holds his breath and he waits for this child to die just like everyone else has. 

Instead, her eyes slip shut again and she says, “I don’t know who I am.” 

Outside, the screaming starts again. Link realizes he’s digging his nails into Amelia’s arm, and he loosens his grip as he says, “Amelia, what’s going on?” 

Her eyes stay shut, her face calm and quiet. In a panic, he checks, and she’s still breathing, but she’s not--

She isn’t responding. The air settles, almost loudly enough for Link to hear it, and the screaming continues. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a flash of movement. 

And then another. 

The third one he sees, he catches and he follows with his eyes until the shadow is jumping from the house through the broken wall, and he loses it again. What he finds instead is dozens of them, catching in the unfamiliar orange light coming from the moon. They’re all running, choppy and inhuman, dancing and twitching through the trees, more and more of them, more than Link’s ever seen, and he doesn’t know what’s happening anymore.

“Holy shit,” Rhett says. It doesn’t help, the disbelief in his voice, the way it shakes, how it lilts and twists like the shadows are, uncertain and afraid. 

Link sucks in a sharp breath, lets his eyes fall shut, and says, “I think this is the end.” 

When he chances a glance at Rhett, his jaw is set and his brow is furrowed, staring outside through the crumbled wall. He’s watching the shadows, ignoring Link. 

He tells Link, “You can see the ground shake, when the light catches one of them. They’re trembling.” Then, “We shouldn’t be inside for much longer. We don’t know how long the house will stand.” 

“Help me carry her.” Link stands, moves to gather her in his arms, but feels Rhett’s hand on his shoulder and pauses. 

His eyes are red, his face gone sour, upset. And Link doesn’t hear him through the ringing in his head, through the screaming from outside, but he sees his mouth move. This is all too much. He feels every inch of his body ache for it to be over, just wanting something to reach the end so he doesn’t have to keep trying so hard. 

Every time they find peace, it’s ripped from them. Link is convinced they aren’t supposed to be happy or content anymore. They had their years of that, of a normal life, of peace and content and happiness. The earth doesn’t want to allow them that anymore. They were given life. 

They were given tools for survival, an immunity to whatever has been going on around them, an aversion to the moss. They were given Amelia. 

They were given a second chance, but not happiness. 

And now, Link’s almost certain that second chance is up. 

He’s not sure if they’re going to die, but he knows the earth is. He knows Amelia is. And he doesn’t know if he’s quite convinced those two aren’t the same in one. 

Picking her up feels weighted. She’s so small, but he struggles with it, his arms trembling as he holds her, careful not to jostle her too much. And for just a second, there’s a moment where he feels connected to everything again. It’s just like earlier, when he was tracing the sun as it fell from the sky, ran his fingers through the grass to feel the pulse of the earth again. 

He can feel the pulse of the earth in the hand he’s got cradled under her knees. She’s heavy and alive and furious. 

And  _ he  _ is heavy and alive and furious. 

His knees ache as he carries her down the stairs, his heart beating in time with the screams from outside. Rhett follows him, and Link knows he’s talking, saying Link’s name over and over again, stuttering through protests and panic. But Link isn’t putting her down.

He’s not leaving her in this house to rot. 

He’s bringing her outside, where she should be. 

It’s odd, how the house shifts and creaks around them, but never starts collapsing. Link almost wishes it would, if only because it would make some semblance of sense. 

But it stands tall and sturdy even as Link’s trembling to pieces as he carries Amelia across the threshold. 

Finally, he hears him. “Link, stop!” 

So he does, right in his tracks, barely out the back door. The candle in the kitchen is still burning, flickering wildly as the ground shakes. He swallows the lump in his throat and turns to face Rhett. 

“What?” he asks, feeling the muscles in his arms burn. “What do you want?” 

“I want you to stop,” Rhett says. He’s angry, has it written all over his face, in the line of his shoulders. “We should have left her upstairs.” 

The words get stuck in his throat, and he’s not sure he wants to say them anyway. He shakes his head, everything swelling in his chest all at once, a horrible, painful wave of emotion that rocks through him hard and fast. But he ignores it. He ignores Rhett. He ignores the pain in his muscles. 

Outside, the air is thick. The moon is just an orange sliver in the sky, just enough light to see the shadows. There are so many of them, and the screaming is impossibly loud, taking up too much space. They’re all running in the same direction, and Link wonders if he should be running with them.

The patch of grass he was laying in earlier still has the indentation of his body, the taller grass pushed into the ground, and if he tries hard enough, he can place himself there again, staring up at the sky, before all of this started happening. Imagining things doesn’t fix any of this, but for a second, it’s nice. 

That’s where he puts her. 

Careful and easy, he lays her there, where he was earlier in the day, watching as everything started to unravel. She looks so calm, even around the screaming, the earthquake, the shadows. 

The river is just a little ways away, and Link doesn’t realize he was walking until he hears the water. Mindlessly, he strips his clothes off, leaves them under the nearest tree, and takes off in a sprint. He rushes through the shadows, through the screams, running against the current of it all, his lungs burning in his chest as he lets out a scream of his own, loud and angry and cathartic. 

The water is warm. 

It rushes around his whole body, numbing his senses for just a beat of time before he surfaces. He sucks in a heavy breath before diving back down, letting out a scream underwater for good measure, to make sure he’s heard, to get his point across, and he’s still screaming when his head pops out of the water again. 

He’s sure he looks crazy, looks like he’s losing it, but he’s never felt more alive. 

This is the end of it all. It’s the end of everything. 

He doesn’t why, but he’s the one who gets to watch the world end. He’s the one who gets to make sure it happens exactly as it should. 

Panting wildly, catching his breath, feeling his heart pound in his chest, he starts climbing out of the water. He feels different. 

He feels better. 

Pulling his clothes on almost feels like acceptance, and he decides to find Rhett instead of finding his way back to Amelia. She’ll be fine. Whatever happens, she’ll be fine. 

Rhett is easy to find, tugging furniture out of the house so that if it does collapse, they’ve got something to build a fire with, at the very least, without having to venture into an unstable building. He knows the thinking, how he’s worrying about after, how he’s not thinking about Before. 

But Link is always thinking about Before, and he plops down onto a chair next to the desk from the living room. He leans over and pats the seat of the opposing one, meeting Rhett’s eyes for the first time all night. 

“Feel better after your bath?” Rhett asks, and he’s not smirking, even through his joke. 

Link shrugs. “Come sit.”

There’s a sigh, heavy and settling in the pit of Link’s stomach with everything else, but Rhett still sits. Link scoots until he can put his elbows on the desk, rests his chin on top of his hands. 

The shadows are still running. 

They’re still screaming. 

And Link sucks in a slow, steady breath. “Rhett,” he starts, “can we talk about Before? Is that something-- Is that something you’re ready to talk about?” 

This is it. It’s probably their last chance. He wants Rhett to get it all out, to end this feeling something other than hollow. He wants to give Rhett a chance at absolution. They’ve been running from the very beginning, running and running and never catching their breath, never healing. This is their chance. 

And Link has to talk about them. He’s gotta talk about the good things he had, the things he lost, the things he hasn’t even mentioned since all of this started because it was always too hard for Rhett. He has to talk about North Carolina, about how the river here isn’t half as incredible as Cape Fear was, about how he thought about kissing Rhett so many times over their lives, but never once did until he felt like his life was dangling over a cliff. 

The world can’t end around them before Link tells Rhett that he’s glad he’s the one Link got to do all of this with. 

Link lost so much. They both lost so much, everything, from one stitch of their lives to the next, but one thing has been a constant. 

One thing has been so important, that the earth gave them a chance to tie up the loose ends, to finally meet in the middle. And even if they’re sitting at a desk, watching the shadows run, watching the moon get dimmer and dimmer, smaller and smaller-- even if the world is crumbling to pieces below them, Link is glad they were given a chance to find their way to each other.

He wants so badly to talk about Before, to meet in the middle again. 

There’s a pause, a stretch of silence between them, and right as Rhett goes to open his mouth, they’re interrupted. 

Link knows, immediately, when he sees it. It lands on the desk, gentle and kind, and is met with another, and another, and another, until there’s too many to count, shuddering around the desk. He hasn’t seen butterflies since Before, and he  _ knows _ . 

Rhett knows, too. Link can tell, with how he sniffles, nods his head, and sweeps them away with a flourish of his arms.

She’s gone. 

Everything else will follow soon. 

But for now-- 

“Yeah,” Rhett says. He sucks in a sharp breath. “Yeah, Link. Let’s talk about that.” 


End file.
